“I have landed the great whale; I mean Answer to Job. I can’t say I have fully digested this tour de force of the unconscious. It still goes on rumbling a bit, rather like an earthquake.”

C.G. Jung Letters Vol. 2 (1951 – 1961)

Introduction

In 1952, at the age of seventy-six, Carl Jung wrote Answer to Job in a single burst of energy and with strong emotion. He completed it while ill, following a high fever, and upon finishing, he felt well again. Jung wrote in a letter, “If there is anything like the spirit seizing one by the scruff of the neck, it was the way this book came into being.” The book explores the nature of God, particularly what Jung perceived as God’s dark side—a theme that preoccupied him throughout his life. This began as early as the age of three or four, when he had a dream of a subterranean God, “not to be named”—a terrifying revelation granted to him without his seeking it. Jung stated:

“This book has always been on my mind, but I waited forty years to write it. I was terribly shocked when, still a child, I read the Book of Job for the first time. I discovered that Yahweh is unjust, that he is an evildoer. For he allows himself to be persuaded by the devil, he agrees to torture Job on the suggestion of Satan.”

C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters

Answer to Job is part of Vol. 11 of the Collected Works: Psychology and Religion. Its motto, “I am distressed for thee, my brother” (II Samuel 1:26), sets the tone for what is likely Jung’s most passionate work. The origin of Answer to Job can be traced to Aion—written a year before—where Jung delves into the psychology of Christianity, particularly the Christ-Antichrist antagonism symbolised by the two fishes of Pisces. Yet while Aion is dense and heavily intellectual—Job feels like an eruption of the feeling function—an earthquake, a great whale, a fever. Jung speaks from the heart, wrestling with God as Job and even Christ did—both asking why God had forsaken them. Perhaps Jung asked the same.

Jung’s father suffered from religious doubts and died struggling with his faith—he did not really know God; he only believed in Him. Jung found this truly tragic. He later says that the problem of Job had been foreshadowed in a dream, in which he visited his long-deceased father. His father took a large Bible bound in shiny fish-skin, opened it to the Old Testament, and began interpreting a passage—but he did it with such swiftness and erudition that Jung could not follow.

When asked about the happiest moment and most beautiful experience of his life, Jung said it came one Sunday, after working hard on Answer to Job. He was sailing his boat and had dozed off. Then, his father appeared, patted his shoulder, and said, “You have done the right thing, and I thank you for that.” In that moment, Jung felt he had redeemed his father’s religious struggle.

Jung later remarked that he would gladly revise all of his books—except Answer to Job. That one, he said, he would leave untouched. In it, the theology first explored in the Red Book—the progressive incarnation of God, and the replacement of the one-sided Christian God with one that encompasses evil within it—found its clearest expression. This makes Answer to Job one of Jung’s most controversial works. Jung wrote in a letter that the book, “released an avalanche of prejudice, misunderstanding, and above all, atrocious stupidity.”

When Jung was once asked how he could live with the knowledge he had recorded in Answer to Job, he replied, “I live in my deepest hell, and from there I cannot fall any further.”

Jung emphasises that Answer to Job is not about what one believes about God, but rather what the history of symbols reveals about God. He makes it clear that he does not aim to announce a metaphysical truth. The book reflects his personal experience and is simply the voice of a single individual seeking thoughtful engagement from others.

Religion as a Psychic Truth

Before we delve into the Book of Job, it is crucial to recognise that religion should not be seen as merely presenting physical facts. This often leads to conflicts: some people believe it to be true that Christ was born as the son of a virgin, while others deny this as a physical impossibility. Everyone can see that there is no logical solution to this conflict and that one would do better not to get involved in such sterile disputes. Both are right and both are wrong. The key is to move beyond the idea of “physical” truth. Religious statements reflect psychic truths, rooted in unconscious, transcendental processes, and cannot be proven physically—or else they would inevitably fall into the category of the natural sciences. Religions are based on archetypes of the collective unconscious. Ideas of this kind are never invented; they are rather spontaneous phenomena which are not subject to our will. “People don’t have ideas. Ideas have people.”

Job: The Oldest Book of the Bible

The Book of Job is believed to be the oldest book of the Bible, possibly dating to the patriarchal era (2000–1500 BC), the time of Moses (around 1440 BC), or Solomon (around 950 BC). Others argue for a later date, based on its language.

The story centres on a righteous man whose faith is tested by Satan with God’s permission. Job loses his wealth, his servants are killed, his children die in a whirlwind, and he is struck with a grievous illness. Even his friends abandon him, insisting that God is just and that Job must have done something wrong—denying him even the basic solace of human compassion. His cries for justice go unheard, so that Satan’s cruel wager can proceed undisturbed.

Despite his frailty, Job knows he is confronting a superhuman being—powerful, yet easily provoked. He laments, “He multiplies my wounds without cause” and “He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.” Refusing to betray his conscience, Job cries out, “I desire to argue my case with God” and insists, “I know I am not what I am thought to be… You know that I am not guilty.” Aware of the vast disproportion between man and God, he pleads, “Will you torment a windblown leaf?”

Still, Job refuses to give up. He says, “I will never say that you are right; I will maintain my integrity until I die. I will cling to my righteousness and will not let go.” And finally, with a hope that transcends despair, he affirms, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth.”

What is most remarkable about Job is that, despite his suffering, he never doubts the unity of God. Yet within this unity, Job perceives a deep conflict—God allows the innocent to suffer. Still, Job is certain that somewhere within God, justice must exist. This paradox leads him to expect, within God, a helper or an “advocate” against God. Through it all, Job remains faithful. In the end, Yahweh calms down, and the therapeutic power of unresisting acceptance proves its worth. God honours Job’s struggle, restoring his family and fortune. Job becomes the archetype of the faithful servant.

Union of Opposites in God

The fundamental idea in Answer to Job is that the pair of opposites is united in the image of Yahweh. God is not divided but is an antinomy—a totality of inner opposites. This paradox is the essential condition for His omniscience and omnipotence. Love and Fear, though seemingly irreconcilable, coexist at the heart of the divine.

Jung found that the old medieval philosophers had an image of God that pointed to a complexio oppositorum(combination or union of opposites), or as Nicholas of Cusa called it, a coincidentia oppositorum (coincidence of opposites), which describes the coexistence of contradictory elements within one being. Job confronts this very dilemma and astonishingly, believes that God will help him against God, which presupposes a similar conception of the opposites in God. Yet such an opposition must be expected wherever we are confronted with an immense energy.

There can be no dynamic manifestation without an initial tension that generates the necessary energy. If we consider the deity as a living presence within human experience, then its origin must lie in opposition—in paradox. Yet the monotheistic impulse tends to construct a unified, anthropomorphic image of God, one that denies contradiction. As a result, it is strange—and even painful—for us to accept a paradoxical or contradictory image of the divine. But when we try to grasp what such full acceptance entails, we begin to understand why it evokes such fear and resistance. It is a difficult problem, but an ancient truth.

Abraxas

Jung saw the union of opposites in the figure of Abraxas. He writes:

“Abraxas is the God who is difficult to grasp. His power is greatest, because man does not see it. From the sun he draws the summum bonum [the highest good]; from the devil the infimum malum [the lowest evil]; but from Abraxas life, altogether indefinite, the mother of good and evil.”

Carl Jung, The Red Book

Abraxas is the figure that represents the union of the Christian God with Satan, and hence depicts a transformation of the Western God-image. Jung states:

“I understood that the new God would be in the relative. If the God is absolute beauty and goodness, how should he encompass the fullness of life, which is beautiful and hateful, good and evil, laughable and serious, human and inhuman? How can man live in the womb of the God if the Godhead himself attends only to one-half of him?”

Carl Jung, The Red Book

The Divine Drama: Yahweh and Job

The Book of Job forms part of the “divine drama” of Christianity. Yahweh’s wrath had long been known—he was an envious guardian of morality, especially justice, and demanded to be praised as “just.” This set him apart from distant gods like Zeus; Yahweh was intimately involved with humanity, forming a personal bond. As Psalm 89 shows, Yahweh swore to keep his covenant with David forever. Yet, he broke his oath. This feels like a profound betrayal—God failing in His integrity. A breach of such a sacred contract would not only feel like a personal betrayal but a profound moral injury. David’s response reflects this: “How long, Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire? … Lord, where is your former great love, which in your faithfulness you swore to David?”

Jung saw Yahweh’s demand for praise as evidence of a personality dependent on external validation, lacking self-reflection and, as a result, incapable of morality, which requires consciousness. Yahweh is not imperfect or an evil demiurge, but a totality that holds both justice and its opposite. His existence, despite his immense power, is fragile—dependent on human consciousness to become real. Without recognition, Yahweh risks collapsing into blind rage, hellish loneliness, and the torment of non-existence, followed by a gradual reawakening of an unutterable longing for something which would make him conscious of himself.

It is striking how easily Yahweh, without reason, had let himself be influenced by one of his sons, by a doubting thought, and made unsure of Job’s faithfulness. Satan is presumably one of God’s eyes which “go to and fro in the earth and walk up and down in it.” This echoes the Persian tradition, where the deceitful spirit Ahriman arose from a doubting thought within Ahura Mazda, the god of goodness and creation.

The experiment in the Book of Job, with a wager placed upon a powerless faithful man, is deeply disturbing. Yahweh’s actions seem so cruel that one might wonder if hidden motives are at play. Could Yahweh harbour some form of resistance against Job? But what does man possess that God does not have? It seems that man’s weakness has given rise to a higher level of self-reflective consciousness—something God, in his omnipotence, lacks. Could Yahweh, then, suspect that man holds a concentrated light He himself does not? Such divine jealousy might explain his troubling behaviour.

As Job suffers pointlessly, something begins to take shape in the background—a quiet compensation for his pain. Unintended by Yahweh, Job had secretly been lifted up to a superior knowledge of God which God himself did not possess. Had Yahweh drawn on his omniscience, Job would not have gained this insight—but then, much else would not have unfolded either.

Job perceives God’s inner conflict, and through this insight, he attains divine knowledge. By persistently bringing his case before God, Job becomes the very obstacle that forced God to reveal his true nature. When Yahweh says, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without insight?” he rebukes Job—but in truth, what Job says is very insightful. The only dark thing here is how Yahweh ever came to make a bet with Satan. It is Yahweh who darkens his own counsel. Yahweh projects a sceptical face onto Job, one he despises because it reflects his own, and fears it for its critical gaze. It is only in the face of such fear that one boasts of power and invincibility—to a broken man already crushed by divine brutality. Yahweh sees in Job a force not of man, but of God—an equal power that provokes him to unleash his full might.

Yahweh’s willingness to hand Job over to Satan reveals his doubt in Job, projecting his own tendencies toward unfaithfulness onto him as a scapegoat. God must have seen that Job’s loyalty held firm and that Satan had lost the bet. He must also have realised that, in accepting this bet, he had done everything possible to drive his faithful servant to disloyalty. Yet what surfaces is not remorse, but a vague sense of something that unsettles his omnipotence—the extremely uncomfortable fact that he had let himself be bamboozled by Satan.

The Creature Surpasses The Creator

The conflict intensifies for Yahweh due to an unprecedented factor, which is something that has never occurred before in the history of the world: a mortal man, through his moral behaviour, is unknowingly raised above the divine. The creature has surpassed the creator. To Job’s horror, he sees that Yahweh is not human, but in some ways, less than human. Yahweh’s actions, driven by unconsciousness, cannot be morally judged. This lack of reflection allows a conception of God where goodness and cruelty coexist without conflict.

The unconscious mind of man sees clearly even when conscious reason fails. The drama is now complete for all eternity: Yahweh’s dual nature has been revealed. Such a revelation, whether it reached man’s consciousness or not, could not fail to have far-reaching consequences.

Yahweh and Sophia

When an external event touches unconscious knowledge, it can surface into consciousness. The experience is recognised as déjà vu (literally, “already seen”), a memory of pre-existent knowledge. Something similar must have happened to Yahweh: He begins to experience an anamnesis of Sophia, who, as described in Proverbs, was present alongside God during the creation of the world. Job explicitly states, “But where can wisdom be found?” As Job comes to know God, so too must Yahweh come to know Himself, and in doing so, attain a higher level of consciousness. For such self-reflection, wisdom is needed.

Just as Yahweh is legitimately united with his wife Israel, so too does he have a feminine pneuma—a spiritual force that pervades existence—from all eternity. This is comparable to the concept of Shakti in Hinduism and Chokmah, the second of the ten sefirot in Kabbalah. Similarly, according to legend, Adam’s first wife is Lillith—a dark correspondence to Sophia—Eve would then correspond to the people of Israel.

Abel: Foreshadowing the God-Man

If Adam, the original father, is a copy of the Creator, then Cain, his son, mirrors God’s son, Satan. Thus, Abel, God’s favourite, must also have his correspondence in a “supracelestial place.” However, Abel is met with an early violent death. He is not the authentic archetype of the son well-pleasing to God, but the first of the kind to be met with in the scriptures, foreshadowing Jesus Christ, the God-man.

Abel’s fate may reflect a deeper metaphysical event—perhaps a conflict between Satan and another son of God, one of “light” and greater devotion to his father. Egyptian myth, particularly Horus and Set, offers insights into this dynamic.

God Becomes Man

Christ, the new son—whom God declares, “With Him I am well pleased”—will be both a mortal man like Adam, capable of suffering, and, unlike Adam, not merely a copy but God Himself—begotten by the Father, renewing the Father as the Son. Mankind is not, as before, to be destroyed, but saved. No new human beings are to be created, but only one, the God-man. For this purpose, a contrary procedure must be employed. The Second Adam, shall not, like the first, proceed directly from the hand of the Creator, but shall be born of a human woman. Genesis 3:15 (the protoevangelium) contains the promise of God to send a seed of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head and redeem humanity. Mary, the Second Eve, is chosen as the pure vessel for this birth. Her virginity, free from original sin, makes her a daughter of God, embodying the state before the Fall.  Mary’s deep love reflects Sophia’s influence on Yahweh’s new creation. As Queen of Heaven and intercessor, Mary is the incarnation of Sophia.

Christ’s birth, though a singular historical event, has always existed in eternity within the pleroma, the realm where past, present, and future exist simultaneously. What exists as an eternal process in the pleroma repeats in an irregular pattern throughout time. For instance, Yahweh had one good son and one failure—Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau—reflecting a recurring archetype of hostile brothers. This motif, still present in modern variations, is a fragment of the divine drama.

God becoming man marks a world-changing transformation. From the beginning of Creation, Yahweh’s creation of man in His image prefigured this. In omniscience, God always knew man’s divine nature. Only recently are we beginning to realise that God is Reality itself, including man—a realisation unfolding over millennia.

Christ and the Hero’s Myth

The birth of the Son of God follows the hero’s myth. Christ is not intended as merely a national Messiah, but as the universal saviour of mankind. His birth aligns with classic hero motifs: the annunciation, divine virgin birth, and a rare celestial event—the triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces in 7 BC, interpreted by the Magi as the Star of Bethlehem. This event marked the beginning of a new era. Christ’s life also reflects hero themes such as the recognition of his kingship, the persecution of the newborn, his flight and concealment, his lowly birth, and the motif of the growing up of the hero is discernible in the wisdom of the twelve-year-old child in the temple.

Answer to Job

What stands out in Christ is his love for mankind. But, for Jung, there’s little evidence he ever reflected on himself, except in the cry from the Cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Jung writes:

“Here his human nature attains divinity; at that moment God experiences what it means to be a mortal man and drinks to the dregs what he made his faithful servant Job suffer. Here is given the answer to Job.”

Carl Jung, Answer to Job

This moment, where the human experience is felt so profoundly, also reveals the full force of the divine myth—both aspects are inseparable. Yahweh’s intention to become man, born from his encounter with Job, is fulfilled in Christ’s life and suffering—God becomes fully human and can now empathically see and suffer humanity’s pain. Suffering appears to be the sine qua non for the increase of consciousness.

Christ as Archetype of the Self

Religion is inseparable from myth, as it connects us to the eternal truths. Myth is not fiction but consists of facts that are continually repeated and observable. Christ’s life as a myth does not undermine its truth; but rather expresses its universal validity. As the God-man, Christ embodies the archetype of the Self, the union of opposites (divine and human), and the model for individuation. For the believing Christian, Christ is everything, but certainly not a symbol, which is an expression for something unknown or not yet knowable. And yet he is a symbol by his very nature. The figure of Christ embodies a profound human experience which resonates with the collective unconscious of humanity.

Christ would never have made the impression he did on his followers if he had not expressed something that was alive and at work in their unconscious. Ten of the twelve apostles died as martyrs for their faith—people do not die for a lie. Christianity itself would never have spread through the pagan world with such astonishing rapidity had its ideas not found an analogous psychic readiness to receive them. It is this fact which also makes it possible to say that whoever believes in Christ is not only contained in him, but that Christ then dwells in the believer as the perfect man formed in the image of God.

The Role of Satan

It is fitting that Satan (the adversary or accuser) later on received the name of Lucifer (Light-bearer). It was he who placed those obstacles in Yahweh’s way, which omniscience knew to be essential for the unfolding of the divine drama. Among these, the case of Job was pivotal, and it could only have occurred through Satan’s initiative.

Satan’s later ineffectiveness is explained by Christ’s vision in Luke 10:18, where he saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. This metaphysical event marks the final separation of Yahweh from his dark son, leaving Satan powerless in heaven and unable to manipulate his father. Although Satan is banished from the heavenly court, he has kept his dominion over the earthly realm—for now.

Christ’s death on the cross, prefigured by Abel, cannot be blamed on Satan. It was a fate chosen by Yahweh to atone for the wrong done to Job and to advance humanity’s spiritual and moral development. The significance of humanity is enormously enhanced when God becomes one of us. Jung flips the traditional understanding of Christ’s work of redemption: it is not an atonement for humanity’s sin against God, but a reparation for a wrong done by God to man.

Yahweh identifies with his light aspect and becomes the good God and loving father. While he retains his capacity for wrath, he now exercises it with justice. The attempt to secure an ultimate victory for good seems inevitably to lead to a dangerous accumulation of evil, resulting in catastrophe. In comparison to the end of the world as described in Revelation, events like the Flood or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah are mere child’s play; this time, the entire creation is destroyed. As Satan is imprisoned for a thousand years before his final defeat, the destruction of the world cannot be attributed to the devil, but must be an “act of God.”

However, before the world ends, even Christ’s victory over Satan—the counterstroke of Abel against Cain—remains incomplete. A final, powerful manifestation of Satan is still to come. It seems unlikely that Satan would passively accept God’s incarnation in Christ. This would surely have stirred his jealousy, driving him to imitate Christ and seek to incarnate himself as the dark God. This plan will unfold through the figure of the Antichrist after the prophesied thousand years are over.

The Role of the Holy Spirit (Paraclete)

The Catholic Church believes that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, dogma can develop and unfold progressively in line with Christ’s teachings. Christ promised his disciples to abide within them, for we are made in the imago Dei (image of God). He further promised to send the Paraclete (helper or advocate) to lead believes into truth and facilitate the ongoing realisation of God in his children. The work of the Holy Spirit expands the process of incarnation. Christ, the firstborn, is followed by many brothers and sisters who, though not begotten by the Holy Ghost or born of a virgin, share a deep kinship with God through participation in Christ’s body and blood. Jesus stated in John 10:34: “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods?’”

God’s incarnation in Christ requires continuation and completion because, owing to his virgin birth and sinlessness, Christ was not a fully empirical human being. As St. John states, he represented a light which, though it shone in the darkness, was not comprehended by the darkness. Christ remained outside and above mankind. In contrast, Job was an ordinary human being, and the wrong done to him and humanity can only be corrected by God incarnating in an empirical human being. This act of expiation is performed by the Paraclete, for just as man must suffer from God, so God must suffer from man. Otherwise, there can be no reconciliation between the two. Psychologically, the Holy Spirit represents the individuation of mankind.

Conflict of Opposites and Redemption

Christian ethics, by creating insoluble conflicts that afflict the soul, brings man closer to a knowledge of God. Since all opposites are of God, man must bear this burden, and in doing so, he becomes a vessel for divine conflict. Suffering often arises from the clash of opposites, and while we hesitate to describe such a painful experience as being “redeemed”, the Christian symbol of the Cross reflects this struggle. The suffering Redeemer stands in the middle of the two thieves—one who goes to hell, the other to paradise. In their own way, these thieves were also redeemers of mankind, they were the scapegoats.

The Christian experience of redemption comes only through the most extreme and intense conflict, provided the individual does not break but accepts the burden of being marked out by God. In this way, the imago Dei is realised, and God becomes man. Even Christ, in the Garden of Gethsemane, felt the weight of this burden so deeply that he fell to the ground and sweat drops of blood. In his prayer, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will”, he expressed his deep desire to avoid the Passion (Latin for “suffering” or “enduring”) that lay ahead.

Privatio Boni and Summum Bonum

Jung found the idea of the privatio boni absurd, which sees evil as merely the absence of good. Psychological experience shows that whatever we call “good” is balanced by an equally substantial “bad” or “evil.” Likewise, the idea of the summum bonum requires a complement to restore the balance, or else man will be hopelessly split, for to deny the darkness is to deny half of oneself. Ignoring the darker aspects of ourselves only leads to their projection onto others, while confronting our shadow creates a more balanced and whole personality.

Enantiodromia

When God incarnates solely in his light aspect and sees himself as pure goodness, an enantiodromia is inevitable. This psychological law states that a one-sided tendency in consciousness eventually gives rise to a powerful counterposition in the unconscious, which, over time, asserts itself and takes control of consciousness. This may well be the meaning of the belief in the coming of the Antichrist, which we owe more than anything else to the activity of the Holy Spirit.

In these circumstances the potential starts flowing from the unconscious towards consciousness, and the unconscious breaks through in the form of dreams, visions, and revelations. Jung explores how Christ must enter the empirical and sinful nature of man, and how this might unfold, drawing on insights from the Books of Ezekiel, Enoch and Revelation.

Visions and Mental Illness

Visions should not automatically be dismissed as signs of mental illness unless there is clear evidence of a psychological or neurological condition. For Jung, visions like Ezekiel’s are archetypal expressions of the collective unconscious. They reflect a split between the conscious and unconscious, and are the psyche’s attempt to restore balance. Such experiences can occur in normal individuals as well—though not frequently, they are by no means rare.

The Book of Ezekiel

In Ezekiel’s vision, he sees four living creatures with four faces (human, lion, ox, and eagle). The quaternity is a common symbol of wholeness. Above them is a figure resembling a human, representing the quinta essentia or fifth element. Here Ezekiel has seen the essential content of the unconscious, namely the idea of a higher man, foreshadowing Yahweh’s moral defeat and his eventual desire to become man. What is more, in Ezekiel we meet for the first time the title “Son of Man”, which God uses in addressing the prophet, presumably to indicate that he is a son of the “Man” on the throne, pointing to the future revelation of Christ. The four cherubim on God’s throne, representing the evangelists, form the quaternity that reflects Christ’s totality, just as the four Gospels represent the foundation of his throne.

The disturbance of the unconscious continued for several centuries. Around 165 BC, Daniel had a vision of the four beasts and the Ancient of Days, to whom “with the clouds of heaven there came one like a Son of Man.” Here the “Son of Man” is no longer the prophet but a son of God in his own right, and a son whose task it is to rejuvenate the father.

The Book of Enoch

The Book of Enoch, written around 100 BC, goes into considerably more detail. It describes how the sons of God (or “Watchers”) descended to earth and took human wives, producing Nephilim (giants or fallen ones). These two hundred angels, led by Samyaza, taught mankind forbidden knowledge—among whom Azazel particularly excelled—advancing human consciousness to “gigantic proportions.” This inflation, however, triggered a counter-reaction from the unconscious, culminating in the Flood. So corrupt was the earth in the antediluvian period that the giants devoured mankind and eventually each other. Only after this did four archangels, seemingly by accident, hear the cries of men and discover the chaos on earth. This proves that the sons of God are somehow more conscious than their Father. The later draconian punishment shows that it was a significant event in heaven when two hundred sons of God left the paternal realm to experiment with human beings.

In Enoch, Sheol—the underworld—is divided into four hollow places for the spirits of the dead. Three are dark, but one is bright and holds a “fountain of water,” serving as the abode of the righteous. This division corresponds to a chthonic quaternity, which stands in contrast to a pneumatic or heavenly quaternity. The latter one consists of four faces of God, three of which are engaged in praise and prayer, while the fourth defends against “the Satans” (the adversaries) to prevent them from accusing humanity before the Lord of Spirits, thus preventing further experiments like the Job episode. These four faces are revealed to be the four archangels: Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Phanuel.

In addition, Enoch also encounters four “beings like white men,” one of whom hurls a star into the abyss. Azazel and his followers are bound and cast into the abyss until the end of days, when they will be cast into the fire forever. Thus, prefiguring Satan’s fall in Revelation.

When Yahweh addressed Ezekiel as “Son of Man”, it was initially a dark and enigmatic hint. However, in the Book of Enoch, the figure becomes clearer, described as an “inexhaustible fountain of righteousness”—a quality Yahweh lacks. Enoch had unconsciously given an answer to Job. As Job himself hints when he says, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” Just as Satan plays the role of accuser and slanderer, so Christ plays the role of advocate and defender. The title of “Son of Man” is fulfilled after Christ ascends to heaven and sends the Holy Spirit to reside in creaturely man.

Furthermore, Enoch and Elijah, the only two taken into heaven without dying, prefigure the bodily resurrection—believed to occur at the end of time. As ordinary humans, these individuals show that others, too, can have a vision of God, become conscious of their saviour, and attain immortality.

The Book of Revelation

In the Book of Revelation, written around AD 95, John witnesses the storm of the times, the premonition of a tremendous enantiodromia which he could only understand as the final annihilation of the darkness which had not comprehended the light that appeared in Christ. He did not see that the power of destruction and vengeance is that very darkness from which God had split himself off when he became man. One could hardly imagine a more suitable personality for the John of the Apocalypse than the author of the Epistles of John. It was he who declared that “God is light; in Him there is no darkness.”

In John’s first vision, Christ appears with eyes blazing like fire and a sharp-double edged sword coming from his mouth—an image more suited to battle than to love. Overcome by awe and dread, John collapses. But Christ says to him, “Fear not.” Later, the opening of the sixth seal brings a cosmic catastrophe and everything hides from the “wrath of the Lamb.”

John also witnesses the Second Coming: Christ returns on a white horse, His robe dipped in blood, and the sword again proceeds from His mouth to strike the nations. He comes to rule them with an iron rod. Christ defeats the Beast and False Prophet, and Satan—the great dragon—is cast into the abyss, and imprisoned for a thousand years. During this millennial reign, Christ rules, a period that astrologically corresponds to the first half of the Pisces aeon. After this period, Satan is released for a little while in order to deceive the nations—this symbolises the enantiodromia of the Christian aeon, leading to the reign of the Antichrist. Ultimately, after an unspecified period, Satan is cast into the lake of fire for eternity. The first creation disappears, giving way to a new and redeemed creation.

Prior to this, and strangely—as though it did not belong to the stream of apocalyptic visions—a woman appears in heaven, clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She is pregnant, and a great red dragon stands before her, intent on devouring her child. The child is born, destined to “rule all the nations with an iron rod”, and the dragon is cast to the earth. Yet for Jung, seeing the child as a son of vengeance seems inconsistent, as the Lamb already fulfills this role in Revelation, making the child’s role seem superfluous, though it likely couldn’t have been understood differently at the time.

This child, born from a sun-moon conjunction, is not Christ’s return but a new manifestation, a second Messiah who symbolises the union of light and dark, and thus represents our totality. He belongs to another, future world—hence, the child was “snatched up” to God and the mother is hidden in the wilderness. For the immediate and urgent problem in those days was not the union of opposites, which lay in the future, but in the incarnation of the light and the good, the subjugation of the lust of this world, and the consolidation of the city of God against the advent of the Antichrist, who would come after a thousand years to announce the horrors of the last days.

Although the divine child is already born in the pleroma, his birth in time can only be accomplished when it is perceived, recognised, and declared by man. It would be wrong to think of this archetype as merely repeating itself mechanically. Archetypal situations only return when specifically called for. The true reason for God’s incarnation in sinful man lies in His encounter with Job.

After Satan is thrown into the lake of fire, the Apocalypse closes, like the classical individuation process, with the symbol of the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage of the Lamb and His Bride, the New Jerusalem. The city is a perfect square, made of pure gold, clear as glass—representing absolute purity. From God’s throne flows the river of life, with the tree of life beside it, as a reminder of paradise and pleromatic pre-existence. The city represents Sophia, who was with Yahweh before time began and will reunite with God at the end of time. This union restores the original pleromatic state, symbolising one single hermaphroditic being, an archetype of the greatest universality. The solution here is not the reconciliation of opposites but their final severance, allowing the saved to identify with the light side of God. The marriage takes place in heaven, where “nothing unclean” enters, high above the devastated world. Light consorts with light. That is the programme for the Christian aeon which must be fulfilled before God can incarnate in creaturely man. Only in the last days will the vision of the sun-woman be fulfilled, marking the transition into the Age of Aquarius, estimated to occur between AD 2000 and 2200, and which will constellate the problem of the union of opposites.

“It is high time we realised that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing.”

C.G. Jung, C.W. Vol. 12: Psychology and Alchemy

In order to learn the art of seeing, we must integrate a good part of our own darkness, through painful self-reflection and shadow work, bringing the dark unconscious contents into the light of consciousness. The goal is not to remain mired in darkness, but to overcome it using goodness and moral strength. Otherwise, we shall not be able to assimilate the dark God who wants to become man, nor endure Him without perishing. This requires not only Christian virtues but also the wisdom that Job sought, which was not yet recognised by Yahweh.

The revelation was experienced by an early Christian who, as a leading light of the community, presumably had to live an exemplary life and demonstrate to his flock the Christian virtues of true faith, humility, patience, devotion, selfless love, and denial of all worldly desires. In the long run this can become too much, even for the most righteous. Even the saints cast a shadow. Irritability, bad moods, and outbursts of affect are the classic symptoms of chronic virtuousness. Not for nothing was the apostle John nicknamed “son of thunder” by Christ. Of course, this assumes that the same John authored the Gospels, the Epistles, and Revelation.

Jung writes:

“I have seen many compensating dreams of believing Christians who deceived themselves about their real psychic constitution and imagined that they were in a different condition from what they were in reality. But I have seen nothing that even remotely resembles the brutal impact with which the opposites collide in John’s visions, except in the case of severe psychosis. However, John gives us no grounds for such a diagnosis. His apocalyptic visions are not confused enough; they are too consistent, not subjective and scurrilous enough… Their author need not necessarily be an unbalanced psychopath… But he must have an intensive relationship to God which lays him open to an invasion far transcending anything personal.”

Carl Jung, Answer to Job

Like Job, John saw the fierce and terrible side of Yahweh. For this reason, he felt his gospel of love to be one-sided, and he supplemented it with the gospel of fear.

“God has a terrible double aspect: a sea of grace is met by a seething lake of fire, and the light of love glows with a fierce dark heat of which it is said, “ardet non lucet”—it burns but gives no light. That is the eternal, as distinct from the temporal, gospel: one can love God but must fear him.”

Carl Jung, Answer to Job

John outlined the course for the whole aeon of Pisces, with its dramatic enantiodromia, and its dark end which we have still to experience, and before whose—without exaggeration—truly apocalyptic possibilities mankind shudders. The four horsemen, trumpets, and vials of wrath in Revelation are still ahead, and modern threats like nuclear and chemical warfare echo the horrors described in the book. John foresaw many of these dangers in the final phase of the Christian aeon.

Not nature but the “genius of mankind” has knotted the hangman’s noose with which it can execute itself at any moment, this is just another way of speaking for what John called the “wrath of God.”

“Ever since John the apocalyptist experienced for the first time (perhaps unconsciously) the conflict into which Christianity inevitably leads, mankind has groaned under this burden: God wanted to become man, and still wants to. That is probably why John experienced in his vision a second birth of a son from the mother Sophia, a divine birth which was characterised by a coniunctio oppositorum, and which anticipated the filius sapientiae [the son of wisdom], the essence of the individuation process.”

Carl Jung, Answer to Job

Assumption of Mary

Inspired by the workings of the Holy Ghost, Pope Pius XII announced the Assumption of Mary in 1950, affirming her ascent into Heaven. As the heavenly bride, Mary is united with the Son in the heavenly bridal-chamber, and, in her aspect as Sophia, with the Godhead itself. This points to the hieros gamos in the pleroma, and in turn implies, the future birth of the divine child, who will choose as his birthplace the empirical man. This metaphysical process is known as the individuation process, which runs its course whether we are conscious of it or not.

Jung considered this the most important religious event since the Reformation. The dogma symbolically fulfils John’s vision of the sun-woman, foreshadowing the incarnation in sinful man and easing the path toward wholeness by re-emphasising the feminine aspect of God, which includes the chthonic, or dark, side—an essential element seen as the missing fourth aspect of the Trinity. In this way, the Trinity is transformed into a Quaternity, a symbol of wholeness.

Union of Opposites and Individuation

In severe times of conflict, Jung recommends to wait and see whether the unconscious will not produce a dream with a reconciling solution. In alchemy, the philosophers’ stone, a symbol of wholeness, is created through the union of the rubedo and albedo stages, which symbolise the sun and moon, and the hieros gamos of King and Queen. The figure that results is the hermaphroditic Mercurius. This is precisely the figure we encounter in the Apocalypse as the son of the sun-woman. He unites the coldness of the moon with the heat of the sun, serving as a catalyst of the union of opposites. This represents the alpha and omega of the process. “It has a thousand names”, say the alchemists, meaning that the source from which the individuation process rises and the goal towards which it aims is nameless and ineffable.

The image resurfaces again in the dreams of modern man, with no connection with alchemy, and it always has to do with the bringing together of the light and dark, as though modern man, like the alchemists, had divined what the problem was that the Apocalypse set the future. It was this problem on which the alchemists laboured for nearly seventeen centuries, and it is the same problem that distresses modern man. Everyone shares this tension, and everyone experiences it in his individual form of unrest, the more so the less he sees any possibility of getting rid of it by rational means. It is no surprise, then, that we are facing a crisis of meaning.

Everything now depends on man: immense destructive power is in his hands, and the question is whether he can resist the urge to use it, balancing his actions with love and wisdom. He will struggle to do so alone and needs the help of an “advocate” in heaven—the eternal child who brings healing and wholeness to the fragmented man. The Self, as an image of the goal of life spontaneously produced by the unconscious, represents the realisation of wholeness and individuality.This process is driven by instinct, which ensures that everything which belongs to an individual’s life shall enter into it, with or without the consent of his will.

It makes a significant difference whether one understands what one is living out, knows what one is doing, and accepts responsibility for one’s actions. Before the judgment of nature and fate, unconsciousness is never accepted as an excuse; on the contrary, there are very severe penalties for it. Hence all unconscious nature longs for the light of consciousness while frantically struggling against it at the same time.

The conscious realisation of what is hidden and kept secret certainly confronts us with an insoluble conflict; at least this is how it appears to the conscious mind. But the symbols that rise up out of the unconscious in dreams show it rather as a confrontation of opposites, and the images of the goal represent their successful reconciliation. Something empirically demonstrable comes to our aid from the depths of our unconscious nature. It is the task of the conscious mind to understand these hints. If this does not happen, the process of individuation will nevertheless continue—just like an acorn becomes an oak.

The difference between the “natural” individuation process, which runs its course unconsciously, and the one which is consciously realised, is tremendous. In the first, consciousness does not intervene; the end remains as dark as the beginning. We become its victims and are dragged along by fate towards that inescapable goal which we might have reached walking upright. In the second, the darkness is illuminated, and consciousness necessarily gains in scope and insight. Then, we walk upright toward our goal. The encounter between conscious and unconscious has to ensure that the light not only illuminates the darkness but also understands it. This aligns with Christ’s saying:

“Man, if indeed thou knowest what thou doest, thou art blessed; but if thou knowest not, thou art cursed, and a transgressor of the law.”

Codex Bezae, Apocryphal insertion at Luke 6:4

Here the moral criterion is consciousness, and not law or convention, The goal seems to be the increase of consciousness, the lifelong task of knowing oneself. Knowledge of ourselves leads to knowledge of God, and knowledge of God leads to a deeper knowledge of ourselves. The only thing that really matters now is whether humanity can elevate to a higher level of consciousness, but this is only possible through a deeper understanding of our own nature.

We can, of course, hope for the undeserved grace of God, who hears our prayers. But God, who also does not hear our prayers, wants to become man, and for that purpose he has chosen, through the Holy Spirit, the creaturely man filled with darkness—tainted with original sin and who learned the divine arts and sciences from the fallen angels. It is this guilty, burdened individual who is most suited to carry the continuing incarnation, not the guiltless one who stands apart from the world, avoiding life’s demands—for in such a person, the dark God would find no room.

The Challenge Ahead

Can humanity withstand the tension of opposites until they are finally united, leading to a new and more enlightened age, without succumbing to darkness and self-destruction? Only time will tell. For now, we must not despair, but continue doing our duty, and strive to become beacons of light for others navigating the same darkness.

The new enlightened age does not come without challenges. For when God becomes man and man becomes God, it raises the question: do we all become true God-men? Such a transformation could lead to insufferable conflicts and dangerous inflation, as ordinary mortals, still bound by original sin, would struggle. In these situations, it is helpful to remember St. Paul and his split consciousness: on one hand, he felt called and enlightened by God, while on the other, he saw himself as a sinful man who could not pluck out the “thorn in the flesh”.

“Even the enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries, who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms of the earth and vast as the sky.”

Carl Jung, Answer to Job

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The Psychology of God’s Dark Side

In 1952, at the age of seventy-six, Carl Jung wrote Answer to Job in a single burst of energy and with strong emotion. He completed it while ill, following a high fever, and upon finishing, he felt well again. The book explores the nature of God, particularly what Jung perceived as God’s dark side, a theme that preoccupied him throughout his life.

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