I began writing this reply about a month ago and did not finish it before going on vacation. It is still not really concluded, and in spite of its lateness, I will post what there is. I have also been working on a number of other things and didn't want to hold onto this one, even if unfinished, any longer.
-Matt
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Many thanks, Mats, for your elaborations.
Regarding Vaughn and Dorn on quartarius and similar terms, my quibble is that these are esoteric ideas that are not rooted in empirical or scientific data. They may be very useful as interpretations of psychic and spiritual phenomena, but there has to be a prerequisite assumption and at least a handshake of faith to justify them. Their usefulness as a lens into Jung's or a universal psychology seems to me limited by any audience's willingness to commit to that handshake. As a generally faithless person, I'm rarely willing to begin observation of an object or phenomenon with that kind of assumption. That is not to say that these terms might not be useful metaphorical tools (the necessity of such I do recognize, even in science). But there needs to be (for skeptics like me) a preliminary argument that demonstrates why these tools are 1.) needed, and 2.) better than various other metaphorical tools for the observational task at hand. And
that argument needs to be largely free from abstractions and non-empirical assumptions. I.e., we need to be convinced that the unique or at least unusual way the terms are being used is warranted by the special case of a particular data set.
For example, when Jung introduces his conception and term "anima", the discerning reader/evaluator requires both a logical argument for why the specific term is being used and also a demonstration of how specific data are illuminated by the employment of the term/concept anima. Although I can no longer recall where, I am pretty sure Jung takes pains to do both of these.
Although I also have a deep interest in alchemy and Hermetic thought and imagery (mostly from a psychological angle), I can't help but feel stricken by the problem of alchemical esotericism and even outright obfuscation when trying to use alchemical ideas in modern (psychological) language. From what I can discern, you make excellent and wholly logical use of these alchemical terms/concepts. It is only the underlying assumption that the esoteric alchemical ideas are valid foundations for a modern, psychological argument where I remain unconvinced. So, for me, an atheist, it is a little like hearing an argument that is founded on the assumption that God is real or that the Christian religion is true and right.
Jung, where trinity and quaternity are concerned, takes a similar approach (which you are obviously revisioning) and seems to argue that there is a particular "psychology" or attitude/mindset that can be associated with either a trinitarian or a quaternian symbol. He enters willingly into theological debates on such matters, veering away form his psychological/more-empirical lifeline. He justifies this by treating the trinity and quaternity symbols as naturally occurring archetypes innate to the human psyche/brain. I have yet to be convinced that this is valid and that 3 and 4 symbols have an inherent, universal meaning. Surely they have a "numinous" kind of effect as symbols that appear spontaneously, and I do think they lend themselves to interpretation in many cases. But the interpretation, I think, needs always to be contextual. There is a core logic to certain numbers (3 and 4 are some of the most clear). 3 has a beginning, middle, and end, and triangularity, while 4 lends itself to squareness and the neat division into halves of half of itself and to the delineation of physical spaces (as in the four directions). But where Christian (or other religious) theological and alchemical interpretations of these numbers occur, I don't think universality can be assumed.
Therefore, I can't accept that Jung's thinking can be faulted for being "quaternian" or that Christian thought can be seen as either right or wrong based on its "trinitarian" conceptions. Equally, "trinitarianism" does not inherently indicate for me "transcendentalism" or an orientation to otherworldliness (in these instances, threeness would be functioning as a sign given a specific, somewhat arbitrary meaning by a group of people and not a naturally occurring symbol with inherent, structural meaning). I would need other, less abstract criteria to evaluate Jung's psychology
or Christian thought. This is where psychology would function to reduce arbitrary signs to psychological phenomena and attitudes (and perhaps to historical development in cultural contexts).
I'm not sure if that languaging issue is ultimately surmountable for me, but despite my reservations, I find the further extension of your arguments largely compelling and insightful. It remains then merely a curiosity for me that you are able to derive logical and adept insights from what seems to me a foggy linguistic foundation of assumptions. As long as your argument doesn't claim to be self-evidently true because one of your assumptions is self-evidently true (and I rarely see that happening in your writing), you avoid potential linguistic pitfalls.
When Jung struggles with both Christian and pagan notions in the Red Book, it probably reflects on his wish to unite Christian theology with a fourth and pagan element.
Leaving aside the "numerian" analyses you provide for the time being, I think you are correct here. At least, I would agree that Jung saw his imaginative efforts as some kind of amalgam of Christian and pagan . . . and that he sought to treat what he felt was an "imbalance" in the Christian mindset with a dose of a paganism he believed was repressed and devalued/demonized. He is using Freud's repression model here with his own romantic tweak, as what has been repressed is a kind of "inferior function" that ends up being the seat of the god (or God) itself. Jung's Red Book experiment is an effort of sorts to revitalize his Christianity with this repressed pagan element. But Jung is profoundly suspicious of this "pagan", inferior element that lurks in the "unconscious". He fully accepts that it has been relegated to this darkness because it is truly unfit for the righteous, Christian attitude. He doesn't (as later, even more romantic, New Agers would) deem the repressed element somehow superior to the more-conscious Christian elements. Rather, it is a curious missing piece that in itself is perhaps demonic and rightly suspect, yet is necessary to complete a fully functional attitude when coupled with the more-conscious Christian approach. Without it, an individual (or world view) can continue on, but only with a gradually increasing emptiness or waywardness, a loss of soul. And as that loss or wound accumulates, the desire and even need for this lost soul becomes increasingly charged with libido.
That libido swelling was also something Jung treated with suspicion, worrying that it needed to be handled very carefully so as not to explode or inflate and contaminate the ego. It needed still to be mediated by a strong consciousness.
Never does Jung approach this like some kind of closeted pagan occultist. As romantic (and volkisch) as he was, his Protestant rational side seemed to take precedence. The Red Book experiment is filtered entirely through a Christian lens, with Jung constantly moaning in protest to every appearance of a "pagan" other like an old nun compulsively fingering a rosary as a talisman against demons everywhere. He is extremely uptight and defensive, particularly when anima figures are around. He basically has his fingers shoved into his ears and mumbles, "This is not happening. This is not happening." He gleans only the very slightest from his encounters with the anima, recognizing only very generally and in a detached way that these relational experiences are meaningful and should be transformative. But he only gets to this idea after the fact, and only in an intellectualized and detached way (much of the Red Book is divided into alternating episodes of experience/interaction and private reflection/psychologization/philosophizing). During his encounters he is a complete ninny, coming across even in his very slight acquiescences like a child with his fingers crossed behind his back as he emptily promises to do what he knows is right.
This all gives the impression that Jung's dissatisfaction with his Christianity is relatively unconscious. He doesn't understand it and doesn't want to believe in it (just as in his childhood vision of God's church-shattering turd, he struggles to repress the thought for some time). He is like a man in a flood creeping to ever higher, rapidly vanishing ground. He does not choose to swim for another shore or hop in a boat. He intends to wait it out all the while screaming, "My God, I'm going to die!" And he is very adept at finding ever-higher ground and escaping the worst and deepest of the water.
But as a modern, non-Christian reader of the Red Book, I find his constructions largely "hysterical" and the dangers mostly self-imposed. Nothing remotely sinister approaches Jung until well into the text and only after he has wailed on and on about how terrible that otherness is. It reads to me like he is convincing himself of what he had always believed. There is a regression of the anima in the Red Book as a result of this. She becomes more marginalized, more determined to have Jung face his own shadow, and eventually she seems to have basically had enough and says she has to leave (along with a version of the shadow that is a bit like an aborted pagan Christ image for Jung). But toward the beginning, when the anima figure is more robust, she offers Jung some truly useful insights and critiques (that he, of course, fails to take to heart and weasels away from).
Jung characterizes his own prudishness as Christian (and sees the others he encounters as pagan and demonic), but I suspect it runs even deeper than his Christianity and is a fear of otherness, which he blames for being seductive and violating rather than recognizing his own hungers and complexes.
My contention, though, is that the whole couching of the Red Book's relational experiences in a Christianized, pagan=debased and evil attitude is responsible for much of the eventual failure Jung experiences. Even as he rationally and intellectually faults it, he embraces the Christian demonization of all things pagan . . . and is drawn toward that paganism entirely in spite of himself. It "seduces" him, in his addled opinion. He is an "innocent" being bullied by a greater power. Never does he have a truly positive (or even neutral) portrait of these "paganized" others, and never does he experience his contamination with that "paganism" as truly revelatory and enlightening or positively transformative. Instead, he "reasons" that he must be tarred with this shadowy paganism in certain (small) ways in order to become more "whole". And that wholeness Jung sees as important, because he recognizes that his Christian righteousness is a sham. Thus emerges the fairly crazy idea that one needs a dose of the devil to make the whole Christian cocktail work properly. It's a kind of "exception that proves the rule" idea that self-servingly usurps that exception to mean the opposite of what it implies (namely, that the "rule" is flawed).
Jung's later writing is kinder to paganism and the pagan elements of the unconscious, but in the Red Book he is merely a lapsed Christian, a Christian who wants desperately to be good but is overwhelmed by and must acquiesce grudgingly to "pagan darkness".
In all this, Jung Christianizes his approach to the autonomous psyche and applies the lens of conscious = Christian, unconscious = pagan where I find this to be a false dichotomy. It would be much more accurate to characterize the autonomous psyche as "natural" or naturalistic compared to the seemingly rational, scripted, algorithmic construction of conscious selfhood (i.e., conscious identity is largely made of verbal language, sets of beliefs and value-based response routines; it is not dynamic and complex like a natural living thing).
Jung largely buys into the conventional, Western Christianization of history that rendered "paganism" dark, bloody, corrupt, and sinful. The Church's propaganda machine constructed this history and attitude toward paganism, but the actual history (which can only be gleaned through the almost absolute wall of Christian historicizing propaganda) seems to be much more complex and much less favorable to Christian salvation. The rise of Christianity as a state religion of Rome and the first Christian emperors was hardly a matter of salvation, and there is no evidence that it bettered society or the lives of Roman citizens. In fact we know that Christian power presided over the "decline and fall" of the empire and rise of the so-called "dark ages". How much Christianity as a belief system is responsible for this is a matter of very complex debate, but state Christianization was verifiably used in the state oppression of other religions, the burning and demolition of pagan temples and libraries that housed much of the knowledge and thought of classical Greco-Roman culture, and the assault and often murder of probably hundreds of thousands of "heretics" who resisted oppression. Science, medicine, and art suffered massive technical regressions under early Christianization . . . losses that were instigated and sanctioned by a Christian doctrine that actively discouraged any such pursuit that might seem to contradiction Christian "truth" and wisdom. E.g., there is no need for scientific medicine because God determines all health and life. All one needs is faith and humble obedience to the Church.
Much of the cultural "salvation" that eventually returned came with the Renaissance and saw the return of classical Greek and Roman (and Muslim, especially in the case of alchemy and metallurgy) knowledge that had been preserved by Muslims and regained indirectly through the Christian Crusades meant to annihilate and convert this "dark other". Although Jung was a critic of Christianity in many ways, he never took a political or historical tack in his criticism. He treated the theological writings of the Church Fathers like pure expressions of the unconscious, failing to see their social and political contexts and use (totally undisguised) in propagandizing.
What I mean to say is that "paganism" isn't just flesh, blood, polytheism, and decay. It was high modern culture, science, democracy, philosophy, diversity, technology, and even (often neglected by Christian historicizing) complex systems of ethics (some of which Christianity adopted, none of which it "invented"). But Jung doesn't focus on this in constructing a largely "pagan" unconscious. He accepts the self-justifying Christian prejudices and evaluations as objective fact about the psyche. And that is a non-psychological, unscientific move.
Still, he was right in a sense that (for him personally), the autonomous psyche presents itself initially out of the personal shadow. It rises up out of the filth, out of what has been devalued. And for the Christian Jung, this was distinctly pagan, polytheistic, fleshy, earthy (the first layer of the repressed and devalued . . . as Jung seemed to be or at least think himself a Christianized Germanic "barbarian" by innate disposition). Jung's insight on this point is quite strong. Where I fault him is where he decided that what he saw and felt through his shadow was an accurate portrait of "the unconscious" rather than a distortion of the autonomous psyche created by Jung's own cognitive habits, self-constructions, and socialized prejudices. Even with his wise introduction of the "personal equation" idea, he still didn't quite see through the shadow to the onbective Other. Perhaps this was because he always remained a bit too hostile toward his personal shadow and a bit too likely to stereotype certain others (women, Jews, blacks, etc.) devaluingly.
You write:
The pagan world was materialistic in the sense that worldly goods and gifts were viewed as boons of the gods. If a person had riches and beauty, for instance, it was a clear sign that he/she was both favoured and patronized by the gods. In the beginning of our era, pagan spirituality had run its course. Its degradation into materialism created a rebound in an extremely spiritual type of religion, namely Christianity. Worldly goods and chattels, or individual talent, weren't proofs that a person was favoured by God. All are equal in the eyes of God. In fact, "the last will be first, and the first will be last." The divine spirit did not remain in earthly things anymore, but had become transcendentalized. I hold that it is only on the surface that the Christian religion has pagan elements in it. Its theology is very transcendental.
As you might guess, I simply don't agree that your construction of history here is correct. I am not an expert on the religions of pagan Rome, but I know they were diverse, and that Christianity arose in a period a massive religious diversity. Christianity itself is a supreme syncretism combining elements of Mystery religions, Roman state religions like Mithraism and Sol Invictus, Egyptian death/rebirth religions, multiple forms of Judaism, and a dose of Hellenistic philosophy, particularly Cynicism (which deserves much of the credit for the "highly spiritual" anti-materialist ideas some forms of Christianity adopted). I'm not sure it is accurate to call it "extremely spiritual". It's proto-Gnostic and Cynic roots along with a neoplatonic devaluation of the body in favor of the mind/spirit give Christianity a very non-corporeal focus, divorcing it from flesh and world, lending it to forms of asceticism. But all of these things are clearly inherited from pre-Christian (i.e., pagan) sources and are in no way original to Christianity. And to look historically at early Christianity, institutionally, it was never ascetic and anti-world. It functioned much like a modern corporation and accumulated enormous wealth . . . sometimes by converting rich people and getting them to donate their money, but also by less savory means like collecting certain kinds of tariffs (after Roman Christianization, non-Christians in the empire were taxed massively) and selling indulgences and (fake) relics. Essentially, especially for the early Church salvation was for sale . . . and the Church was a business that commodified and exquisitely advertised its product in much the same way useless crap is sold to people today.
That's not to say that their weren't "spiritual" Christians. There have always been many. But the Church has notoriously used those individuals (and invented or reinvented many others) to hawk their wares and keep revenue coming into the Church coffers. Some of these kinds of things were addressed (not resolved) with the Reformation, but we are talking over 1000 years of Christianity before that . . . and even after that there was a great deal of corruption and horrific levels of bloodshed in battling between Catholics and Protestants as well as witch burnings, inquisitions, and the various assaults on heretics and others of various kinds. Although it isn't my favored brand of spirituality or mysticism, the Christian mystical vein did produce many spiritual and not a few highly ethical and good people. But even a "good" person who allows himself to be exploited by a corrupt institution or for ultimately corrupt purposes is not a positive model in my mind.
It should also be noted that the Christian demonization of worldly possessions and earthly interests, historically speaking, was largely a form of propaganda used to control the poor masses and peasants that made up the majority of the Christian constituency. Since Christianization presided over the destruction of a modern civilization, it destroyed a larger middle class of skilled and often educated workers (a large middle class is a mark of modern civilization and does not generally exist in premodern forms of society). The vast majority of people in the Christianized world were extremely poor (especially after the large Roman military had largely dissolved and could not longer be sustained), and the Church happily encouraged that to allow wealth to be redistributed to Church officials. While these poor suffered miserably, the Church grew larger and more powerful. The condemnation of early things was a hypocritical doctrine. That sacrifice was only made by the already destitute (and bamboozled and/or oppressed) and by a very few "saint-like" Christian mystics, ascetics, and monastics that (as above) were either used as posterboys for the Church or, if they were "off message" in any way or had anti-power politics, were accused of heresy and abused or killed.
So, in my opinion, it is not at all a matter that "the divine spirit did not remain in earthly things anymore". Earthly things continued to be of enormous interest and desirability for those Christians empowered by the Church. There was just a massive redistribution of wealth to the very few due to the destruction of a middle class.
Also noteworthy regarding the "extreme spirituality" of Christianity is the vicious war (both physical and propaganda) the Catholic Church waged against the Gnostics. Gnosticism was a more specifically spiritual and anti-worldly variety of religion. And it obviously appealed to many. But it did not make for a lucrative business model. While not fiscally empowering itself, it took revenue away from the Church. The Church therefore set out to crush its "business" competitor. There were many reasons given for this "necessity", but one was that Gnosticism encouraged too much asceticism and was often anti-institutional, discouraging members from giving all their money to a church. In this sense, Gnosticism has to be seen as more loyal to the model of Christ in the gospels than Catholicism was (in early Catholicism, the poor must stay poor, but the rich can stay rich or even grow richer . . . as God ordains). I suspect that some forms of proto-Gnosticism predated all the eventually Catholicized Christian institutions, texts and ideas, and that what would become the Catholic Church took the compelling ideas and figures and general story of Christ from these proto-Gnostics and commodified it for mass consumption and serious profit-earning. That notion (dating forms of Gnosticism before proto-Catholicism) is not currently accepted in mainstream early Christian studies, but not because it can be disproved with evidence. Only because that is the convention. That is what the Church Fathers claimed (when constructing the pre-history of Christianity).
It makes more sense to me that proto-Gnostic forms of Christianity came first, and the great ire of the Church directed at Gnosticism in the 3rd and 4th centuries was part of a propaganda (and outright warfare) campaign to wipe out the most dangerous competitor that the Church had . . . dangerous because it laid (accurate) claim to being, or being derived directly from, the "original Christianity". This is the theory of Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy in
The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God? (2001). That book is flawed in a number of ways (references are often a bit dated and selective and the authors want to promote a New Agey neo-Gnosticism), but I find their basic thesis logical and compelling. There is valid evidence for that thesis, just not conclusive evidence. More importantly, there is no compelling evidence against it.
My point is that there are numerous historically evidenced reasons to question the Christian claim to being an "extremely spiritual" religion or at least for casting that term in a positive light.
Although I am obviously an extremely hard sell on anything remotely Christian, I find your idea of Jung's deification fantasy as an exorcism in (relatively loose) disguise very interesting and sensible. I'm not sure it is the most accurate interpretation (as it is always dangerous to deviate from what a person says about or associates with his or her own fantasy or dream), but I like it. Despite the images you point out, one possible strike against your interpretation is that Jung does not appear to be exorcized of this "demon" god. He continues to be just as drawn to and repelled by it . . . arguably until the end of his life.
Whether exorcism or deification, Jung seems to be something of a pawn or stand-in in this fantasy. He is not permanently transformed. It is not, for instance, a shamanic initiation fantasy in which the shaman's body is dismembered and reconstructed with pieces of iron. Instead it is at best a temporary high that Jung neither comprehends nor draws transformative or inspirational meaning from. That temporariness would seem to lend itself to your exorcism theory. Although, it is also true that Mithraic (and other Mystery) rites like the Taurobolium were meant to identify the initiate with the god only temporarily.
Another potential flaw with your exorcism theory is that it takes a very Christian assumption that a pagan god is equivalent to a demon and is something that can and should be exorcized from a person. As above, in pagan Mystery rites, the initiate's identification with the god was a specifically controlled, brief one. It is different than say, the Christian Eucharist, which transubstantiates into the body and blood of Christ within the individual. My sense here is that for the Christian, the believer is infused with Christ. The "Christ" is not meant to "leak out" or be consumed and passed (although, like a drug, future doses may be required to keep the Christ-quotient in the individual high enough). In Mystery rites, the initiate is meant to experience the god (through temporary identification and empathy) and be (lastingly) transformed by the observation and ecstasy of that experience. That initiate does not go on feeling righteous because the god is in her or him. Rather, the ecstasy with the god like a ritual wound enables the initiate to always remember the empathy with the suffering god. In that sense, there would be nothing to exorcize.