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Hermeticism: The Ancient Wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus

The legendary figure of Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes Thrice Great) is the inspiration for the spiritual teachings known as Hermeticism. He is a syncretism (joining) of the Greek deity Hermes, the winged messenger of the Gods, and his Egyptian counterpart, the Ibis-headed moon god Thoth.

Table of contents

Introduction

Hermes Trismegistus dressed in Arabic with turban and royal crown in the alchemistical manuscript Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana.

Hermes and Thoth were considered to be one and the same. Both of them were psychopomps, guides in the land of the dead. Thoth is also the god who presides over speech and interpretation. He is the inventor of the alphabet and the art of writing. Ever since, humans have been using writing to preserve the vast array of accumulated knowledge. Thoth is called the heart of Re, the tongue of Atum, the throat of the God whose name is hidden. As divine speech personified, he is the creator of every branch of knowledge, human and divine.

When Hermes met Thoth in Greco-Egyptian Alexandria, Hermes Trismegistus was born. Not long after, followers of the thrice-great one came together and devoted themselves to understanding his wisdom and to achieving the same cosmic illumination that Hermes himself had experienced.

Hermes Trismegistus is the author of the famed Emerald Tablet, which is the source of the most well-known Hermetic dictum, ‘as above, so below’, the key to astrology, alchemy, and other occult sciences, the Emerald Tablet has a history as mysterious as its author’s.

If we call Hermes a “myth”, we thereby recognise that he is greater and more significant than any one historical figure, for he represents a perennial pattern of the human condition. Hermes is a person without crystallised personality, an archetype, that perhaps represents all truth-seekers, or the truth-seeker. Certainly, he experiences that which all truth seekers hope to experience.

The Neoplatonic sage Iamblichus writes:

“Hermes, the deity who presides over rational discourses, has long and rightly been considered common to all who practice the sacred arts. He who presides over true science concerning gods is one and the same throughout the universe. It is to him that our ancestors dedicated the discoveries of their wisdom, attributing all their own writings to Hermes.”

Iamblichus, On the Mysteries

Many authors wrote under the name of Hermes, as this was logical for devotees of Hermes. True wisdom and learning merited ascription to the lord of all learning. According to the Egyptian priest and historian Manetho, there were over thirty-six thousand books written under the pseudonym of Hermes Trismegistus, which would easily fill the shelves of a large temple library.

There are existing treatises on the origin and nature of the soul, the principles of creation, astrology, alchemy, magic, healing, and much more. However, most of these are lost, but from scattered references we can assume that many more Hermetic works existed than we have copies of today.

The origin of the epithet ‘thrice great’ is believed to have come from the Ibis shrine in Sakkara, Egypt. Records there of a meeting of the Ibis cult in 172 BC mention the name megistou kai megistou theou megalou Hermou, ‘the greatest and the greatest god, great Hermes.’ The epithet ‘thrice-great’ thus reflects the intensifying repetition of the Egyptian adjective. He is also known as thrice-greatest on account of being the greatest priest, philosopher, and king. Another explanation of the epithet was on account of his praise of the trinity, saying that there is one divine nature in the trinity.

Renaissance of Hermeticism

Hermes Trismegistus, floor mosaic in the Cathedral of Siena

In the 15^th century Italian humanist scholars Marsilio Ficino and Ludovico Lazarrelli played a key role in translating the Corpus. Ficino, who had been working on translating the collected works of the divine Plato for his patron Cosimo de’ Medici, immediately interrupted his work when a manuscript of the Corpus Hermeticum became available. These had previously been compiled by the 11^th century Byzantine scholar Michael Psellus, who had no interest in pagan practices, the only reason he would have copied the texts would be to “improve” them so as to make them more compatible with Christian beliefs, purging the tracts of suspicious, occult elements. Thus, the writings that reached Marsilio were more than likely not originally collected in the way he received them.

The Corpus was thought to have been lost to the west since late antiquity and the beginning of the Dark Ages. However, while cities fell and empires crumbled, the fragile pages of the Corpus Hermeticum miraculously survived, testament to how the mind, that insubstantial mystery, can withstand the harshest blows of the material world. The Hermetic quest took place within, in the interior world, that was true; but it travelled roads in the outer world as well.

The idea of a divine wisdom revealed only to the most ancient of sages was developed in the Renaissance, into the notion of a prisca theologia or “ancient theology”, the perennial notion which asserted that a single, true theology exists in all religions, and that it was given by God to man in antiquity.

Many thinkers of the Traditionalist or Perennialist School of the 20^th and 21^st century followed this idea, and spoke of a perennial wisdom, based on the belief that ages ago, mankind received an original and once-and-for-all divine revelation. This was subsequently lost – although traces of it, they believe, can be found in the world’s greatest religions – and until it is recovered, modern civilisation will remain mired in materialism and decadence.

During the Renaissance, it was accepted that Hermes Trismegistus was a contemporary of Moses. And all texts attributed to him were believed to be of ancient Egyptian origin, and thus more authoritative than Plato and the Bible. The 1481 pavement in Siena Cathedral depicts a large image of Hermes apparently instructing men from both East and West. On the floor below Hermes are inscribed in Latin the words ‘Hermes Trismegistus, the contemporary of Moses’. It was generally considered that Hermes had either instructed Moses, or been instructed by him, or both. Thus, in the Renaissance Hermes was a kind of founding father of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. He was a central figure in the vision of a perennial philosophy uniting reason and faith.

At the beginning of the 17^th century, however, the classical scholar Isaac Casaubon took issue with the notion that pagan seers had predicted Christ’s coming. One of his targets was Hermes, in whose alleged writings he saw unmistakable linguistic proof of a much later date than the common tales of Egyptian origins could support. Casaubon detected Platonic, Jewish, and Christian language and ideas, and concluded that the Hermetic teachings date from the early Christian period, between the first and third centuries AD in Alexandria, a city then ruled by Rome, but culturally a cosmopolitan mix of Greek, Egyptian, Jewish and other traditions.

This discovery, combined with a strong anti-Hermetic movement within the Church, and the rise of modern science – evidence of a profound shift in western consciousness – meant the downfall of the thrice-great one. Hermeticism had lost its general fascination and was driven underground. Several Hermetic societies were formed, such as the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The discovery of three new and integral Hermetic writings found near Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945 renewed interest in Hermeticism again. One of them, called, Discourse on the Ogdoad and Ennead, shows without any doubt that the Hermetic believer was initiated into several grades before transcending the sphere of the seven planets and the heaven of the fixed stars. Then he would behold God and be united with him. The Dutch scholar Gilles Quispel writes:

“It is now completely certain that there existed before and after the beginning of the Christian era in Alexandria a secret society, akin to a Masonic lodge. The members of this group called themselves ‘brethren,’ were initiated through a baptism of the Spirit, greeted each other with a sacred kiss, celebrated a sacred meal and read the Hermetic writings as edifying treatises for their spiritual progress.”

The Way of Hermes, Preface by Gilles Quispel

Whether or not there actually existed organised communities of Hermetic devotees, we do not know. It seems plausible that the Hermetic treatises originated in loosely organised circles of people in the educated milieus of Hellenistic Egypt, who almost certainly included people who had experienced altered states of consciousness, and others who were convinced that these experiences were possible.

Moreover, criticisms of Casaubon lost much of their force. For even if the Corpus Hermeticum was written down rather late, its concepts could easily be very old and Egyptian. And in fact, the basic principles of emanation, of the world as an overflow from God, and of man as a ray of sunlight (“All is one, and one is all”) are typically ancient Egyptian.

Technical and Religio-philosophical Hermetica

Modern scholars have somewhat artificially but helpfully distinguished between the technical Hermetica and the religio-philosophical Hermetica.

The technical Hermetica that deals with topics such as astrology, medicine, botany, alchemy, and magic, may go back as far as the second or third century BC. Some of the key texts include the Liber Hermetis, the Greek Magical Papyri, the Book of Asclepius Called Myriogenesis, as well as the Emerald Tablet, among others.

On the other hand, we have the religio-philosophical Hermetica, a series of religious, mystical, or spiritual teachings, of an initiatory character, written between the first and third centuries AD. The core text is the Corpus Hermeticum, which is a collection of seventeen anonymous writings, some of which have not survived intact. The name of this collection can be somewhat misleading, since it contains only a small selection of extant Hermetic texts, whereas the word corpus is usually reserved for the entire body of extant writings related to some author or subject. These writings are original, separate works, rather than part of one book. The selection criteria for the bundling are not known.

Other texts of the religio-philosophical Hermetica include the slightly longer Latin treatise, the Asclepius; texts and fragments collected in the Anthology of Stobaeus, the three Hermetica found with the Nag Hammadi Codices, the Armenian Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius, theOxford and Viennafragments, andother fragments by authors and testimonies.

Salvation in the largest sense – the resolution of man’s fate wherever it finds him – was a common concern of the technical and religio-philosophical Hermetica alike.

The purpose of the Hermetica is not to argue the truth of its propositions; their meaning is the change they effect in the hearts of the readers in awakening them to the truth. For this to take place, it is important to have a translation that reflects the inspirational intent of these writings.

Where to Start?

Elisha in the Chamber on the Wall – William Blake

So, where should one start learning about Hermeticism? It is not uncommon for people to first encounter Hermetic teachings in The Kybalion by the Three Initiates. However, this is not an ancient text. Many of the teachings are representative of New Thought, and a lot of the content is not found in the classical Hermetic texts. This is not to discount its importance in popularising the hermetic teachings and helping people to rediscover the ancient texts. In fact, it can be an excellent gateway to the original sources.

The classic text is the Hermetica translated by Brian P. Copenhaver, which contains the Corpus and the Asclepius, as well as a detailed introduction and extensive notes. If one wants to dig deeper, the Hermetica II by M. David Litwa completes Copenhaver’s work, it includes twenty-nine fragments from the Greek anthologist Stobaeus, the longest and most interesting of which is the Korē Kosmou or “The Daughter of the Cosmos”, which suggests that all knowledge – medical, magical and any other – is important in the quest for salvation. Other texts are the Oxford and Vienna Hermetica, several fragments from various authors and testimonies about Hermes from thirty-eight authors.

Another excellent translation is The Way of Hermes by Clement Salaman and others, which contains the Corpus and the Definitions. The other important text is the Asclepius: The Perfect Discourses of Hermes Trismegistus, also translated by Salaman. This is a great start for beginners.

The Greek Magical Papyri by Hans Dieter Betz is a collection of magical spells and formulas, hymns, and rituals from Greco-Roman Egypt. Some of these spells have as their goal inspiration, literally filling with pneuma or spirit. This occult knowledge is gained by calling upon the gods and spirits through ritual and magical incantation, leading to theosis, the cathartic purification of mind and body through the divine union with the gods.

More scholarly work includes Garth Fowden’s The Egyptian Hermes and Kevin van Bladel’s The Arabic Hermes, which lay more stress on the contribution of Egyptian and Islamic thought to the Hermetic tradition, both of which had historically been denied, in favour of a one-sided view of Hellenistic influence.

Most Hermetic scholars have tried to make the Hermetica as Greek and philosophical as possible, thus losing the sight of many of the core spiritual teachings. Since the late 1970s, this perspective has given way to a new and more complex one, calling much more attention to the Egyptian and religious dimensions of the hermetic writings. Whereas before the salvational insights received during “ecstatic” states were dismissed as “literary fictions”, they were now taken more seriously as possibly reflecting ritual practices that took place in hermetic communities. However, Hermeticism is a religion different from any other, it is without temples or liturgy, followed in the mind alone.

A more recent publication on hermetic teachings is Wouter Hanegraaff’s Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity. In the book, hechallenges the historically dominant narrative of interpreting the Hermetic writings as philosophical treatises. For Hanegraaff, this misses the essence of what this movement was all about, namely, the spiritual path for healing the soul and the transformation of consciousness. That is why the emphasis should be placed on spiritual practice.

The Way of Hermes involved altered states of consciousness in which practitioners claimed to perceive the true nature of reality behind the hallucinatory veil of appearances. Practitioners went through a training regime that involved luminous visions, spiritual rebirth, cosmic consciousness, and union with the divine beauty of universal goodness and truth to attain the salvational knowledge known as gnosis. It is this altered state of consciousness that leads to altered states of knowledge.

Gnosis

At the heart of the Hermetic teaching is the realisation that the individual is fundamentally no different from the Supreme. This realisation is gnosis, a single, immediate event, characterised as a second birth. This teaching outlines the spiritual path that prepares the way for this gnosis, which is not achieved by any effort of the ordinary mind, but is rather the result of divine wisdom.

Gnosis is a Greek word meaning knowledge, but it is a knowledge different from episteme (another Greek word for knowledge) which is propositional, that is, knowing what a thing is. Gnosis is not attained through argument, logic or empirical observation. It is not rational, but religious and mystical knowledge that is revealed, which is the way to individual salvation.

We live in ignorance, unaware of the true nature of reality and of our place in it. For many people, perhaps most, this isn’t a problem. They accept day-to-day life and do not ask why we are here and what we are supposed to do now that we are. The seekers of gnosis, however, are unsatisfied with this. Many of these agnostics, argue that we cannot know what we want to know, defining knowledge in the sense of episteme. This is the great mistake. The English language lacks this distinction, which many other languages still preserve.

For instance, in Spanish, French, and German, they use the words “saber”, “savoir”, and “wissen”, to refer to propositional knowledge (episteme), but they also have the words, “conocer”, “connaître”, and “kennen”, that is, knowledge by direct acquaintance, which is comparable to gnosis. One knows because one has seen and experienced it, rather than by being able to describe it.

Gnosis is neither an expression of faith nor an assertion of belief. In his last years, Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung was asked whether he believed in God. ‘Believe?’ Jung replied. ‘Hard to say. I know. I don’t need to believe.’ Jung had had an experience that convinced him of the reality of God. He didn’t believe in God. He knew God. Jung didn’t mean the traditional bearded God on a throne. God is not a being, but being itself. As many ancient sages have pointed out, “God is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.”

In essence, there is one God. While all religions express their own unique and rich teachings, stories, and myths – they all point to the original source of all creation, which is being itself.

Hermeticism and Gnosticism

Book of Urizen Object 27 – William Blake

In Hermeticism, the human soul originally lives in a perfect non-dual consciousness. It resides outside the cosmos, in a realm beyond space and time. As soon as it descends into the planetary spheres and enters the body, the soul gets corrupted by the demonic tormentors of darkness, representing sins or vices. The problem is not the body, but the passions.

All of us, at this very moment, are living in a state of hallucination. Our true nature lies in the disembodied state, and the only purpose of life is to be reunited with it. For the Hermeticist, it is possible to attain spiritual enlightenment or gnosis while being alive.

This is an important distinction from Gnosticism, in which the spark of the human soul has fallen into matter, and is trapped by it. There is a dualistic worldview of a material world and a spiritual world. The goal of gnosis is to escape from the prison of the world and ascend into the spiritual world, which is only possible after death, when one is liberated from the prison of the body created by the malevolent Demiurge as an obstacle to salvation. Therefore, the Hermeticists are not Gnostics, though both of them speak of gnosis.

The Gnostics would agree with the notion of Plato’s cave, where prisoners are chained and forced to watch the shadows of the things in themselves, mistaking them for reality. The goal is to escape from the cave into the light. In other words, to escape from matter, from the body, into the world of the ideal Platonic forms. This is not the way of Hermes. In Hermeticism, one must not escape to the spiritual world, but rather embody and bring the good, the true, and the beautiful, into the world.

Our task is to take care of the world, and make sure to treat it the way it deserves to be treated, that is what the divine source wants. Therefore, the Hermeticists are world-affirming, not world-deniers. The cosmos is not an inferior product of a Demiurge, but is usually described as beautiful and perfect. While Gnosticism is dualistic, Hermeticism is primarily non-dualistic, there is only one reality, which is the spiritual light that is the source of everything.

When reading the Corpus, one might find apparently great divergences: monist or dualist, optimist or pessimist, however, such variations are sequential rather than contradictory. They are successive levels of understanding, part of the initiate’s spiritual journey, an anagogical ascent towards gnosis, akin to climbing Jacob’s ladder to heaven. Through theurgy (work of the Gods), we can ask for help from the gods, by organising rituals and ceremonies in such a way that we create the right conditions for the gods to appear, using the right words, and right offerings. Instead of us trying to reach the gods, it is they who come down to heal our soul.

Eusebeia

The Song of Los Object 1 – William Blake

The goal for the Hermeticist is to get out of the webs of ignorance by cultivating what the ancient Greeks call eusebeia, the cultivation of reverence and sacred awe for the gods. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Piety is one of the most important aspects of Hermeticism, the admiration of the gods, and of god’s creations: the true, the good, and the beautiful. This alone can lead to salvation, whether one has attained gnosis or not. The gods can forgive everything, except irreverence. That is, responding to this enormous gift of life with negligence and lack of respect. The Hermetica belong to the history of piety, not philosophy, and the greatest evil is impiety.

In his work, The Idea of the Holy, German theologian Rudolf Otto studied the concept of the numinous, which can be understood as the experience of mysterium tremendum et fascinas (mysterious terror and awe), in the presence of that which is “entirely other” and thus incapable of being expressed directly through human language.

The Hermetic Universe: Ogdoad, Ennead, the One

Divine Comedy Paradise: The Empyrean – Gustave Doré

The Hermetic universe begins with the classical geocentric model. The cosmos is portrayed as planets circling around the earth, these are: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Then we have the sphere of the fixed stars. However, this is only the realm of space and time. Beyond this, we have three additional spheres: the Ogdoad, the Ennead, and the One or the source. We tend to think of these hierarchically, but this is a mistake, since they exist in a realm beyond space.

The Ogdoad or Eighth sphere is where the souls reside, before descending into the realm of space and time into the body. Every soul being born in a body is immediately corrupted by both pain and pleasure. Those who have lived a life of reverence will return to the realm of souls.

The ultimate essence of the soul is divine light, which is the Ennead or Ninth sphere. This is the home of Nous, which is often translated as intellect or mind, however; this does not capture its true meaning in the Hermetic teachings, it is thus better left untranslated. Nous is nothing like a faculty of abstract reasoning, it is much akin to intuition, imagination, or divine revelation. It equates to sight, inasmuch as it encompasses everything at once, even God’s infinite essence. It is both spiritual light and enlightenment, and can be realised through mystic initiation.

Nous is the vehicle that allows us to have gnosis, our spiritual capacity to directly access or experience the universal light. The light of Nous is identical with our own inner light, but we might become blinded by its presence. The Hermeticist seeks to become aware that his or her inner light is identical with the universal light of Nous, in order to ascend to the tenth and final sphere, which is called the One, or the Good, the source of everything. This is God, who has created the universe by imagining it. We all exist in God’s imagination. All is one and one is all. The physical world is reflected in the mental, and the mental in the physical. All that has been made is visible, but God himself is invisible.

The Three Worlds: God, Cosmos, Man

The Hermetic God is unbegotten, transcendent, androgynous and the source of everything. He contains everything in himself. The cosmos emanates from Him and becomes alive through Him. The Hermeticist can thus come to know God by acquiring knowledge of the cosmos.

The second God (the cosmos) is in the image of the first God. The Father is eternal because of Himself, but the cosmos is eternal and immortal because it is begotten by the Father. Man has been begotten in the image of the cosmos, but, as the Father willed, not living like other earthly creatures.

Not only does man have affinity with the second God, but also a conception of the first. He perceives the second God as a body, the first he conceives as without a body and as Nous, that is, as the Summum Bonum or Supreme Good, the highest reality in the cosmos, the true identity of every person, and of everything in creation.

The cosmos is not good in as much as it can be moved, but not corrupt as it is immortal; while man is corrupt as he both can be moved and is mortal.

“Only the One remains still and does not move. So, there are these three: firstly, God, Father and the Supreme Good; secondly, the cosmos; and thirdly, man. God contains the cosmos and the cosmos man. The cosmos is the son of God, man the son of the cosmos, and as it were grandson of God.”

Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum Book X

Man has a relationship with the cosmos, and God. Although he is not perfect, he can become so through his spiritual powers. His spirit, therefore, is his true being, which, unlike the body, is immortal and inclined to good.

God, the cosmos, and man are hierarchically and inextricably linked. They are in contact with each other and form a unit. Therefore, stars and planets influence earthly existence. Man is represented in the hierarchy as an image of God, while everything that exists is represented as imbued with pneuma (divine breath or life force).

The correspondence of the three worlds provides the basis for mental contemplation. The Hermeticist focuses on the first image, the material world, which is permeated with divine presence. Eventually he passes on to the second image, man. With the help of Nous, man gains the privilege of raising his eyes to heaven and overcoming his mortal condition. He is the only creature who knows the supreme God, and thus can even in this life become a god.

The Three Faculties: Logos, Gnosis, Nous

Illustration to Milton’s L’Allegro and Il Penseroso – William Blake

The Hermetica intends to aid the initiate in his spiritual growth, containing stages of initiation into the Hermetic Mysteries, in order to unite with God. This can be achieved by developing three faculties: Logos, gnosis, and Nous.

The pupil develops Logos, or reasonable speech, by listening closely to the master and his divine wisdom, and by having a dialogue with him.

“The listener, O son, should be of one mind and soul with the speaker and his hearing should be quicker than the voice of the speaker.”

Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum Book X

The second faculty as we have explored is gnosis, which allows us to develop Nous. Unlike Logos, it requires silence and meditation. Since Nous conceives speech in silence, only that speech which comes from silence is salvation.

Knowledge is a spiritual awakening that consists in realising that the supreme God wants to be known and can indeed be known by those who are worthy of Him. And this cannot be done without piety or reverence.

Corpus Hermeticum: Introduction

The Hermetic teachings generally take the form of dialogues between teacher and disciple. It is believed that these writings originated for the most part from loose collections of sayings or sentences learned by heart, used as spiritual exercises aimed at developing the mental faculties of the subject. These gradually acquired a structured commentary. Hermetic sentences get mysteriously carved in your memory; one does not easily forget them. They are still at work on your mind even when you do not think of them, most of these are summarised in the Definitions.

In Book 1 of the Corpus, a figure who introduces himself as ‘Poimandres, the Nous of the Supreme’, teaches Hermes, who is not presented as a god, but as a human being with divine knowledge.

In Book 12, appears Agathos Daimon or ‘Good Spirit’, a divinity who is also portrayed as a teacher of Hermes. In most of the other books Hermes is a teacher to Asclepius, a healer identified with the Egyptian Imhotep, or to his son Tat, whose name likely derives from the Egyptian god Thoth. Books 16 and 17 are the only examples of a disciple and a son of Hermes, Asclepius and Tat, acting themselves as teachers.

Thus, the Corpus presents three generations of the teacher-disciple relationship. This knowledge transfer is given by divine beings (Poimandres or Nous and Agathos Daimon) to Hermes Trismegistus. Hermes gives the knowledge to Asclepius and Tat. And finally, Asclepius and Tat impart the knowledge to others.

The Vision of Poimandres (Nous)

The Vision of Hermes Trismegistus – Johfra Bosschart

The work starts with Hermes busy reflecting about the world, how it has come into existence and who has created it; and while he is in this state of meditation, a figure appears to him who proceeds to reveal the answers to his questions. This figure is Poimandres or Nous, who states, “I know what you want, and I am with you everywhere.” Hermes tells him: “I wish to learn about the things that are, to understand their nature and to know God.” Hermes enters into an ecstatic altered state of consciousness, which leads to a vision.

The Hermetica consistently state that apart from normal bodily sight there is a “higher” faculty of vision, referred to as the eyes of the heart or of the mind (Nous). The true nature of the regenerated man is perceived only by this higher faculty.

In response to the first part of the question – about the nature of the things that are – Poimandres himself changes his appearance, and the visionary sees an unlimited expanse of clear and joyful light, for which he spontaneously experiences feelings of love. He then sees how a frightening snake-like darkness appears, watery and smoking like a fire, producing a wailing roar and emitting an inarticulate cry. This call is answered by the logos hagios (Holy Word) or the son of God, that comes from the light and descends on this dark nature.

Thus, the soul of man is carried in this way: Nous in the Word, the Word in the soul, the soul in the body.

The animals were created, but they did not contain the Word. God the Father of all, brought forth the Anthropos, Man, whom he loved as his own child, and whom bears the image of his Father. It was really his own form that God loved, and he handed over to him all his creation. For this reason, of all living beings on earth, man alone is double: mortal because of the body, immortal because of the soul. The fact that we are both material and spiritual beings means that we have the unique ability to bring the spiritual reality into the body.

This short explanation leads up to a second visionary episode (or vision-within-the-vision). While in the first vision Hermes was a passive spectator of how the world came into being, in the second vision which answers the question of how to know God, Hermes must now fix his Nous on the light and get to know it. He looks into the eyes of Poimandres for such a long time that he trembles at his appearance. Then he has a sudden realisation, while staring at the universal light, he is also paradoxically looking into himself. There is no distinction between the universal light and his own light, between subject and object, this is the experience of total unity. When Poimandres finally lets go of his gaze, the light that is the visionary himself turns out to have become a boundless cosmos, the archetypal reality “before an infinite beginning.”

The man endowed with Nous is immortal, it is the pursuit of pleasure, desire, and materialism that is the cause of death, that is, spiritual death. For it is preferable to die outwardly, then to die inwardly.

“He who had recognised himself came to the Supreme Good, while he who had prized the body, born from the illusion of desire, remained wandering in the dark, suffering through the senses the things of death… The truth is: light and life is God and Father, whence Man is begotten. If, therefore, you realise yourself as being from life and light and that you have been made out of them, you will return to life.”

Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum Book I

Nous comes to the aid of the devout, the noble, pure, merciful, and the pious. By a life full of love, they win the favour of God and lovingly they give thanks, praising and singing hymns to him in due order.

Those who are evil, envious, greedy, murderers, and ungodly, are very far away from Nous, they are possessed by the avenging spirit, who assaults each of them through the senses, throwing fiery darts at them. The avenging spirit then puts him to torture and increases the fire upon him to its utmost.

We all have these tormentors of darkness within us. Poimandres describes how the soul must travel through all the seven planetary spheres to purify itself from them. After this catharsis, the soul finally leaves the cosmos and joins the Eighth sphere beyond space and time. The souls present there rejoice together in his presence, and having become like his companions, he also hears certain powers that exist above the Eighth sphere, the realm of light, singing beautiful praises to God. The souls ascend to the Father and surrender themselves to the powers, entering into God.

“This is the end, the Supreme Good, for those who have had the higher knowledge: to become God. Well then, why do you delay? Should you not, having received all, become the guide to those who are worthy, so that the human race may be saved by God through you?”

Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum Book I

Hermes is filled with light and is enlightened with Nous. When the vision ends, he gives a prayer of thanksgiving with his whole soul. He becomes a prophet to spread the received teachings, to awaken us from our state of spiritual sleep and drunkenness, and take our share in the immortality that is our birthright. Many have given themselves over to death, while having the power to partake of immortality. Some mocked him and ignored his teachings, others threw themselves at his feet, for they wanted to be saved.

“The great disease of the soul is denial of God, next is belief in appearances, and accompanying these are all evils and nothing good. But then Nous, acting in opposition to the disease, secures good for the soul, just as the physician secures health for the body.”

Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum Book XII

Ultimate truth cannot be found through philosophical reasoning, but through divine revelation. This is why the Corpus begins with a vision.

Corpus Hermeticum: Hermes and Tat

The remainder of the books in the Corpus mostly consist of Hermes conversing with Tat and Asclepius.

In Book 13, perhaps the most important part of the Corpus, Tat has a tense dialogue with Hermes, for he wishes to know the secret for spiritual rebirth. Hermes, however, speaks in riddles. This knowledge cannot be taught, the awakening must come from oneself. Gnosis is only knowable through direct experience. In Zen, this is known as the “Great Doubt”, the spiritual and psychological pressure that comes with the struggle of life leads to an awakening. At the bottom of great doubt lies great awakening. Until it happens to oneself, one will not understand what it is all about. While the master can point at a direction, it is the pupil that has to meditate by himself, and will have to work on his own soul, and Hermes tells his son:

“This ignorance, O son, is the first of these tormentors. The second is sorrow; the third is intemperance; the fourth lust; the fifth injustice; the sixth greed; the seventh deceit; the eighth envy; the ninth treachery; the tenth anger; the eleventh recklessness; the twelfth malice. These are twelve in number, but besides these there are many others, my son. They compel the inner man who dwells in the prison of his body to suffer through his senses. These tormentors depart one by one from the man who receives God’s mercy. This constitutes the manner and teaching of rebirth.”

Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum Book 13

The twelve dark powers correspond to the twelve signs of the zodiac. The combination of emotions that pertains to us, depends on the placement of the constellations at the specific moment of birth, this can be described very precisely by looking where the stars and the heavenly bodies are at that moment, which functions like a cosmic clock. When the time is right and the stars are aligned, the soul descends into the body. At this very moment, our body and soul are invaded and possessed by these dark entities, and for most of us, they remain with us for the rest of our lives. They make up our passions, the destructive emotions that dominate us in all kinds of ways, constituting the whole constellation of our personality. We suffer not because of our body, but because of the passions in our body.

In order to attain gnosis, the dark powers must be expelled. There is a constant battle between light and dark within us. Hermes invokes ten powers of light into the body of Tat, which expel or exorcise the twelve powers of darkness in his body.

“After joy, the power I summon is self-control; most welcome power, let us most gladly receive her too, my son; on her arrival see how she drives off intemperance. Now I call the fourth, steadfastness, the power opposed to lust. This next step, O son, is the seat of justice. See how without trial she has chased out injustice. With injustice gone we become just. I summon the sixth power, generosity, opposed to greed. With greed gone, I next summon truth, deceit flees, and truth is present. See how upon the arrival of truth the Supreme Good arises; envy has fled far from us. The Supreme Good, together with life and light, has followed upon truth, and the torments of darkness no longer fall upon us, but conquered, they all fly off with a rush of wings.”

Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum Book XIII

These first seven powers (which correspond to the seven planetary spheres) overcome the powers of darkness one by one, and the next three powers: life (the Ogdoad, or realm of souls), light (the Ennead, or Nous) and the Supreme Good (the source), which in total make up ten divine powers, drive out the remaining five, so that all the twelve tormentors of darkness fly off.

After some time, Tat experiences an altered state of consciousness, a state of mania, or divine madness, which corresponds to a higher state of knowledge. Tat then speaks:

“O father, I have been made steadfast through God; I now see not with the eyes, but by the operation of spiritual energy in the powers. I am in heaven, in earth, in water, in air; I am in living creatures and in plants; I am in the womb, before the womb, after the womb. I am present everywhere… O father, I see the All and I see myself in Nous.”

Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum Book XIII

Tat is no longer troubled by these dark forces, but blessed by noetic powers of light. Our task is to overpower the dark entities with light, so that they fly off with a rush of wings by their own accord.

We see that Tat has experienced a spiritual rebirth, gaining cosmic consciousness. He conceives himself to be in all places at the same time, in earth, in the sea, in heaven; before birth, within the womb, young, old, dead; beyond death. By conceiving all things at once: times, places, actions, qualities, and quantities, one can understand God. This method is called “becoming the Aion”.

It was the Stoics that developed the concept of the sympathy of all things, which denotes the living, indivisible coherence of the cosmos. This was adopted by Hermeticism and Middle Platonism.

Tat recites a secret hymn in praise of God, the hymn of spiritual rebirth. However, while Tat has cosmic consciousness, he has not yet seen the spheres beyond the cosmos as Hermes has.

The Discourse on the Ogdoad and Ennead

The Youthful Poet’s Dream (Illustrations to John Milton) – William Blake

This leads us to the famous writing found in Nag Hammadi,The Discourse on the Ogdoad and Ennead. Whereas Book 13 of the Corpus describes the rebirth of the pupil, in this discourse the pupil has already been reborn, showing us the initiate’s progress towards the Hermetic mysteries.

Here we find a striking altered state of consciousness induced by a strange magical incantation of vowels. When the priests of Egypt sang their hymns to praise their gods they uttered the seven Greek vowels in the prescribed order, the sound of these seven vowels was so beautiful that people preferred this music to the flute or lyre. The seven vowels correspond to the seven notes of the octave, which are related to the seven planets. The esoteric songbook of the Hermetic community in Alexandria plays a central role at the moments of awakening described in the Hermetica.

Hermes reminds Tat, of the progress he has made thanks to the books, which although belong to a lower stage in the progress towards gnosis, are nevertheless necessary. But they do not suffice, because discursive language simply “does not get as far as the truth.”

Hermes and Tat, along with several brethren, all of which have been reborn, enter a deep meditative state. Hermes begins by calling attention to God’s supreme divine attributes, including the fact that he is named only in silence. The prayer contains a string of mysterious words and vowels that represent God’s “secret name”. A single voice sings the tone, which is answered by the choir, until all vowels are sung. The chanting gets more and more intense, and with every vowel the consciousness of the pupil rises up through the planetary spheres until he is at the top in the highest level, and goes beyond the cosmos, experiencing the Eighth, and the Ninth, and finally, the One, where he sees a fountain bubbling with life.

The pupil experiences a moment of fear, and Hermes tells him to bring his focus back to the hymn. The final stage of the ascent must be mastered by the pupil alone, verbal instruction is useless. Hermes’s words, who have guided the pupil, are no longer of any use. The pupil expresses himself by means of silent hymns that are heard and understood only by an interior faculty of perception. In fact, the most fundamental statement of the pupil is that what he is seeing cannot be put into words.

The initiation has been completed. The pupil has now found peace, and wants to thank God for having granted him the supreme vision he had been asking for. A distinction is implied between the silent hymn of contemplation that was sung during the ecstatic state of the Eighth and Ninth, and verbal hymns that may be addressed to God afterwards, as signs of gratitude.

Hermes instructs his son to write everything down in hieroglyphs and place them in his sanctuary at the right astrological moment, and protect the book with an apotropaic formula, designed to avert evil. So that future generations will be able to read it. Presumably, then, it is the very text that we have been analysing.

Writing as Healing or Poison (Pharmakon)

A relief carving of the Egyptian god Thoth from the Temple of Ramesses II (1279-1213 BCE), Abydos.

Thoth’s invention of writing allowed us not to forget what we have experienced, enabling us to transmit knowledge over time and share it with future generations. However, this is a drug, or as the Greeks call it, pharmakon, writing is healing as it provides knowledge, but also poisonous insofar as one will forget about direct experience, which is inexpressible. People will be reading books believing that they have access to knowledge, but this is an illusion. Therefore, writing is in many ways poisonous. However, Thoth had a secret, which is that writing itself can have a magical effect on consciousness. Even though language cannot express the ineffable, it can resonate and have an effect on the human mind which helps people find their own path towards gnosis.

In fact, in Book 16 of the Corpus, Asclepius speaks to King Ammon about the dangers of language obscuring the true intent of these writings, which are spiritual, not philosophical.

“He [Hermes] said that they would become even more obscure later when the Greeks decide to translate our language into theirs, which will lead to even greater distortion and obscurity. When expressed in its original language, the text preserves the pure spirit of the words. For the very quality of the sound and the pronunciation of the Egyptian language carries in itself the power of what is being spoken… The Greeks, O King, use empty words which produce mere displays. That is the philosophy of the Greeks: a noise of words. We do not use such language but sounds full of power.”

Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum Book XVI

God has endowed man beyond all mortal creatures with these two gifts: Nous and speech, both as much valued as immortality. If he uses these gifts rightly, he will be no different from the immortals, and on departing from the body he will be guided by both to the realm of the gods and the blessed ones.

The Illusion of Death

Atalanta Fugiens Emblem 29 – Michael Maier

In the Corpus we find that the idea of death does not exist, it is an illusion. In reality, there is only creation and transformation, nothing perishes. Just like energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but only transformed from one form to another.

Man is a microcosm that reflects the macrocosm, as above, so below. When the body is dissolved, it is absorbed back into nature, and the soul is absorbed in the cosmos, returning into the unmanifest so that new creatures may come to be. The cosmos is never destroyed, the cycles are a continual rotation and the mystery is the renewal. The true nature of reality is not mortality, but immortality.

Hermes tells his son:

“Have you not heard in the general teaching that all the souls which wander around the whole cosmos, as if separate, are from a single soul, the soul of all? Indeed, there are many transformations of these souls, some more fortunate, others less. Those which are reptiles are changed into aquatic creatures, aquatic creatures into those of the earth, those of the earth into fowls of the air, the air-borne into man. The human souls which gain immortality are transformed into spirits and thence to the choruses of the gods.”

Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum Book X

When one dies with an affliction of the soul, one cannot partake of the Supreme Good. This is the only real death, a spiritual death of cyclical rebirth. The soul turns back on its journey to the reptiles, and that is the condemnation of the evil soul. Reptiles are considered lowly chthonic creatures. In the Bible, the snake is condemned by God for tricking Adam and Eve into eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, and it must crawl on its belly and eat dust all the days of its life.

We think we are alive; the reality is that we are dead, and when we die, we become alive. That is, if we become united with God, by leading a life of reverence.

Man as a Divine Being

Illustration to Milton’s Paradise Lost – William Blake

For the Hermeticist, man is a divine being, and is not to be counted amongst the other and not even among those in heaven called gods. For man exists at once in earth, in the sea, and in heaven.

“Indeed, if we have to speak the truth boldly, the true man is above the gods, or at least fully their equal in power. Not one of the heavenly gods will leave the boundaries of heaven and come down to earth, but man ascends to heaven and measures it and he knows the high from the low, and he understands all the other things there exactly; and even more amazing, he ascends while not leaving the earth. So great is his range. Thus, one may say that man on earth is a mortal god, and that the heavenly god is an immortal man. Therefore, everything is controlled by these two: man, and the cosmos. But all is from the One.”

Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum Book X

The evil of the soul then is ignorance of God; for the soul, knowing nothing of the Supreme Good, is blind and shakes with bodily pains, tormented by darkness. If we do not make ourselves equal to God, we cannot understand Him. Like is understood by like. Allow yourself to grow larger until you are equal to him who is immeasurable, out leap all that is corporeal, transcend all time and become the Aion, then you will understand God.

“God does not ignore man, he knows him fully, as God also wishes to be known. This is the only salvation for man: knowledge of God. This is the ascent to the highest abode of the gods.”

Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum Book X

We can choose between mortality or immortality. It is the inferior choice that destroys man, those who have a mixture of rage and lust do not value things worthy of their attention, but turn to the pleasures and appetites of the body, believing that man was born for that reason, or mistake these greatest evils as the greatest goods.

“There are two kinds of beings, the embodied and unembodied, in whom there is the mortal and the divine spirit. Man is left to choose one or the other, if he so wishes. For one cannot choose both at once; when one is diminished, it reveals the power of the other.”

Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum Book IV

Hermeticism: The Ancient Wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus

The legendary figure of Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes Thrice Great) is the inspiration for the spiritual teachings known as Hermeticism.

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Philosophy: The Love of Wisdom | A Guide to Life

Philosophy is a mode of life, an act of living, and a way of being. Modern philosophy has forgotten this tradition, and philosophical discourse has all but overtaken philosophy as a way of life. Philosophy is not just an intellectual discipline, which can get abstract and divorced from the real world, but is most importantly a way of life that teaches us how to best live our lives.

A carpenter does not come up to us and say, “Listen to me speak about the art of carpentry”, but makes a contract for a house and builds it. So must we, when confronted with life, put our knowledge into practice, and not be like those who devour books and can astonish others by their skill in argumentation, but who, when it comes to their own lives, contradict their own teachings.

Philosophy is a mode of existing in the world, which has to be practiced at each instant, and the goal of which is to transform the whole of the individual’s life. Real wisdom does not merely cause us to know: it makes us “be” in a different way.

The goodness of our lives depends on our soul, in which we can make good use of other valuable things such as health, pleasure, happiness, tranquillity, and so on, which can make a real contribution towards a good life. By contrast, a bad soul will create bad desires, bad choices, and the misuse of potential goods, thus we spiral down a bad life, characterised by vice.

The condition of the soul is entirely a matter of developing and understanding fundamental truths about human nature, and as a consequence of those, about the nature of what is valuable for a human being. If we fulfil our nature by pursuing a virtuous life, our soul remains in a healthy state, enabling us to live a good and happy life – even if we experience suffering, pain, loss of goods, or failure. What concerns external and bodily goods do not diminish the quality of our lives at all, for these are ever-changing. Bad things will always happen to us, as if they constantly move in the outer rim of the circle of life, however, virtue puts us back in the strong foundation of the centre of the circle, where the soul resides. But people will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul.

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Philosophy as a Way of Life

French philosopher Pierre Hadot’s works, Philosophy as a Way of Life and What is Ancient Philosophy? are an excellent introduction to ancient Greco-Roman philosophy. Hadot emphasises the importance of what he calls spiritual exercises, which go beyond simply exercises of thought or moral exercises, rather they correspond to a transformation of our vision of the world and to a metamorphosis of our personality. These exercises do not only have an ethical value, but also an existential one. The notion of spiritual exercises in ancient philosophy is meant to emphasise, first and foremost, that in the ancient schools of thought philosophy was a way of life. The lesson of ancient philosophy consisted in an invitation for each person to transform himself or herself. Philosophy is conversion, transformation of the way of being and the way of living, the quest for wisdom.

Wisdom is conceived as an ideal after one strives without the hope of ever attaining it. The only state accessible to man is philo-sophia, the love of, or progress toward, wisdom.

With spiritual exercises, philosophy becomes not a theoretical construct, but a method for training people to live and look at the world in a new way. It is an attempt to transform mankind. Exercise corresponds to the Greek term askesis, which must not be understood as asceticism, that is, complete abstinence or restriction in the use of food, drink, sleep, and continence in sexual matters.It is the practice of spiritual exercises, inner activities that allow not for self-denial, but for self-transcendence.

A spiritual experience depends not so much on the nature of the activity as on the way it is undertaken, with what attitude and method, and with a view to which goal. It requires a complete attention to and focus upon an activity, and implies immersing oneself so completely in the matter at hand that one forgets oneself, much like what is known as a “flow experience”.

“To take flight every day! At least for a moment, which may be brief, as long as it is intense. A “spiritual exercise” every day – either alone, or in the company of someone who also wishes to better himself. Spiritual exercises. Step out of duration… try to get rid of your own passions, vanities, and the itch for talk about your own name, which sometimes burns you like a chronic disease. Avoid backbiting. Get rid of pity and hatred. Love all free human beings. Become eternal by transcending yourself.”

Georges Friedmann, La Puissance et la Sagesse

The word spiritual reveals the true dimension of these exercises. By means of them, the individual raises himself up to the life of the objective Spirit, that is, “to become eternal by transcending yourself.”

The spiritual progress of philosophy towards wisdom brings about peace of mind, inner freedom, and cosmic consciousness. These three essential aspects of the philosophical way of life all require the practice of askesis in order to be attained.

Spiritual exercises, which are mostly present in the Hellenistic school of philosophy, are not to be confused with those of Spanish theologian Saint Ignatius of Loyola who wrote Exercitia spiritualia, consisting of a series of Christian meditations, contemplations, and prayers. Christianity also adopted spiritual exercises, in order to fortify, maintain, and renew life in the Spirit, the vita spiritualis or spiritual life.

Spiritual exercises are part of a lifestyle that engages the whole existence, it is the art of living. Hadot writes:

“The philosophical act is not situated merely on the cognitive level, but on that of the self and of being. It is a progress which causes us to be more fully, and makes us better. It is a conversion which turns our entire life upside down, changing the life of the person who goes through it. It raises the individual from an inauthentic condition of life, darkened by unconsciousness and harassed by worry, to an authentic state of life, in which he attains self-consciousness, an exact vision of the world, inner peace, and freedom.”

Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life

One difference between modern philosophy and ancient philosophy is that one did not just become a philosopher because one had developed a philosophical discourse. Rather, any person who dedicated his whole being to living a particular kind of philosophical life, without the need of writing nor teaching, was every bit as much of a philosopher as those who developed, researched or founded a philosophy.

“Ancient philosophy proposed to mankind an art of living. By contrast modern philosophy appears above all as the construction of a technical jargon reserved for specialists.”

Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life

Socrates

For Hadot, philosophy as an art of living can be traced as far back as Socrates, born in the 5^th century BC, and considered as the founder of Western philosophy. Socrates started a new shift in philosophy as the pursuit and love of wisdom applied to daily life. Though the work of the natural philosophers or Presocratics were essential to the development of classical Greek philosophy, it was Socrates who taught us how we ought to live, and therefore that we need first and foremost to consider moral questions.

Socrates never wrote anything, and questioned everything ordinary people took for granted or left unquestioned. He would walk around the streets of Athens and ask others to explain seemingly simple concepts such as friendship, justice, piety and courage – only for the interlocutor to realise that he did not know how to explain them or would contradict himself. The Oracle of Delphi stated that Socrates was the wisest person in Athens, but Socrates believed he was wiser than others because he was the only person who recognised his own ignorance.

Unlike the sophists who would trade wisdom for money, and would speak for their own benefit, Socrates would never accept money, and would speak to the benefit of the interlocutor. He taught people to listen to their conscience, the inner voice that tells one what is truly right, and if one doesn’t know what to say, one should keep asking questions to oneself and others, until one finds out. An answer is worth nothing unless it comes from one’s own thinking. It is the process of philosophical thinking that counts at least as much as the answers, and the nature of the questioning is that one has to think for oneself.

Master of Dialogue: Know Thyself

Alcibades being taught by Socrates – François-André Vincent

The enigmatic figure of Socrates was a master of dialogue with others and of dialogue with himself. The Delphic maxim “know thyself” requires a relationship of the self to itself that constitutes the basis of all spiritual exercise. Every spiritual exercise is dialogical insofar as it is an exercise of authentic presence of the self to itself and of the self to others.

Our default view of the self as isolated, individualistic, and egocentric is one of the main sources of emptiness, loneliness and anxiety that increasingly characterise people today. However, this default self is not our real self. There is a higher, more authentic “Self”, which the ancient Greeks called daimon, a self which is constantly aware of its intimate connection with other human beings, with nature, and with the entire cosmos. When our inner daimon is in a state of good order, we experience eudaimonia, a state of good spirit and fulfilment.

As philosophers, we must learn how to dialogue. The dialectical exercise requires persuasion, and for that one must use psychagogy, the guidance of the soul.

“Dialogue is only possible if the interlocutor has a real desire to dialogue: that is, if he truly wants to discover the truth, desires the Good from the depths of his soul, and agrees to submit to the rational demands of the Logos.”

Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life

Rather than us carrying out rational argumentation, we have to obey the Logos and let the living word guide us where it will, that’s how we’ll find the truth, genuine dialogue links two souls together. To distinguish this from our common conception of dialogue, we may use the original Greek version, dialogos.

Logos designates rational and connect thought which exists in individuals as the faculty of reason, and in the cosmos as the rational principle that governs the organisation of the universe. Rationality and clear mindedness allows one to live in harmony with the logos. In dialogos, participants are transformed in such a way that it would’ve been impossible through mere introspection or monologue.

In his revolutionary work, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, Psychology and Cognitive Science professor John Vervaeke explains that the ancient Greek philosophers had a different conception of rationality than our modern one. To be rational does not just mean to engage in reasonable arguments, logic or propositional knowledge, but also to transform ourselves, others, and the world. It is an existential endeavour that changes our mode of being. This is a process of participatory knowing. Rationality is the capacity to reflectively realise our self-deception and illusion, and the need for self-correction. It is a deep contact with reality.

The dialogue intends to form more than to inform, to form the interlocutor or reader so as to lead him to a transformation of his way of life. What is important is not the solution to a particular problem, but the path traversed in arriving at this solution. We turn knowledge into wisdom.

This essential dimension prevents the dialogue from being theoretical and dogmatic and turns it into a concrete and practical exercise. It is not concerned with the exposition of a doctrine, but with guiding an interlocutor to a certain settled mental attitude. We should note that this is what takes place in every spiritual exercise; it is necessary to make oneself be changed, in our point of view, attitudes, and convictions. In other words, to struggle and battle with oneself.

Socrates was put on trial for charges of impiety and corrupting the young. He was sentenced to death by drinking hemlock. Though he was offered exile, he accepted his fate and became a martyr to free inquiry. Socrates preferred to die rather than renounce the demands of his conscience, thus preferring the Good above being, and the soul above the life of his body. At his trial, he stated:

“It is the greatest good for a person to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Plato, The Apology of Socrates

Plato, Aristotle, and all the rest of the sages – derived more profit from Socrates’ morals than from his words. The philosophers’ task consists in action. The Roman philosopher Cicero stated that Socrates had brought philosophy down from the heavens, and compelled it to ask questions about life and morality.

Plato

The death of Socrates was traumatic for many in Athens, and one of his followers, Plato, made it his task to immortalise the figure of Socrates as a philosopher – that is, as a man who sought, both by his word and by his way of life, to approach and to make others approach the way of being called wisdom. Plato kept alive the Socratic spirit in his greatest work, The Republic, and later departed from his master – for a true follower of Socrates is one who thinks for himself.

“From this perspective, the philosophy of Plato—and, following him, all the philosophies of antiquity, even those which were farthest away from Platonism—all shared the aim of establishing an intimate link between philosophical discourse and way of life.”

Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?

Platonism became the bedrock of Western philosophy and spirituality, influencing Christianity and later evolving into Neoplatonism.

“The safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”

Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality

Plato’s goal in founding the Academy, the first real university, was the creation of an intellectual and spiritual community whose job it would be to train new human beings. This would leave a definitive mark on philosophical life in antiquity. Philosophy could be carried out only by means of a community of life and dialogue between masters and disciples, within the framework of a school. It became a distributed cognition that allowed to increase the cognitive power over the world.

Following Socrates, Plato believed that virtue is knowledge, the knowledge which chooses and wants the good. Those who joined the Academy underwent the slow and difficult education of the character, as the harmonious development of the entire human person, and finally as a way of life, intended to ensure a good life and thereby the salvation of the soul. Plato writes the following on the philosophical way of life:

“That is where all the risk lies for man, and it is for this reason that each individual must leave aside all other studies and devote all his care to research, and cultivate this alone. Perhaps he will be able to discover and recognise the man who will impart to him the ability and the knowledge to discern what the good life is, and what the bad life is, and to choose the good life always and everywhere, as far as possible.”

Plato, The Republic

If we do not adopt this way of life, life is not worth living, and this is why we must decide to follow this path. We must live every day in such a way as to become masters of ourselves.

Idealism: Platonic Forms

Above all, we must seek the triad of values: justice, truth, and beauty. These are part of Plato’s theory of Forms or Ideas, which reveal some essential quality of man and the world, and are beyond space, time and causality. When we ask ourselves about the meaning of these ideas, we are talking about the perfect forms of the soul.

The Platonic forms serve as the foundation of our judgments on things concerning human life, and are therefore, first and foremost, moral values. It is what gives value and meaning to this world. This is the essential knowledge of the soul which the soul possessed before we were born and resided in the realm of Ideas.

The perfect forms exist independently of and prior to all our conceptions of it. They are the archetypes or first imprints of which objects in the everyday world are imperfect copies. This is known as Idealism. The idea that we do not experience reality in the so-called real world, but only its dim shadow, has haunted philosophy ever since.

Parable of the Cave

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave – Jan Saenredam

Plato illustrates this in the parable of the cave, which is not just a story but a myth which represents the perennial patterns that concern the human condition, dealing with reality, knowledge, and the meaning of life.

A group of people have been chained to a wall inside a cave since childhood. They are unable to move and can only gaze at the wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and people walk around carrying objects and other living things, the sounds echo off the walls, and the prisoners believe they come from the shadows. They can only see the shadow forms of the objects and mistake them for reality. Little do they know that the shadows are merely appearances of the real forms, that is, appearances of reality. For them, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of images.

When one of them is set free, he looks at the fire and at the real patterns, but they hurt his eyes and appear less clear than the shadows, so he goes back. He is unable to ever leave the cave.

If that prisoner is dragged by force up the rough ascent, he would protest angrily and be in pain, which would only worsen as the light of the sun becomes brighter. This is the slow and painful process of self-transformation. Outside the cave, the man’s eyes slowly adjust to the light until he can look at the people, animals, water, trees, stars, and eventually, the sun itself – the light source that is the life of all things, filling him with awe.

This man would immediately return to the cave to tell the others, but would stumble around and be blind to the darkness, just as he was when he was first exposed to the sun. When he goes to the prisoners and speaks of amazing and wondrous things outside the cave, they think he is a madman, and they would kill anyone who attempted to drag them out.

Few people will make it out of the illusory world, it is only the true philosopher who can escape the cave into the real world. This is an enlightenment myth of coming into the light through an ascent, which the Greeks call anagoge. It is a self-transformative process in which one comes into closer contact with reality, revealing what had hitherto remained concealed. For Plato, this is wisdom, the fullness of being.

Plato’s Cave in The Matrix

The Matrix movie released in 1999 represents this deeply embedded myth in the human condition. The parable of the cave is compared to the matrix, a false reality created by artificial intelligence through a computer program, in order to distract humans while using their bodies as an energy source, and people must wake up to the “real world”. Morpheus presents the main character Neo with a blue pill to stay in his illusory world, or a red pill to see the truth of reality – just as the freed man goes back to tell the prisoners about the real world. When Neo leaves the Matrix, he states, “Why do my eyes hurt?”, to which Morpheus replies, “Because you’ve never used them before.”

Plato’s Tripartite Theory of the Soul

Plato can be considered as the first psychologist who presented a structure of the psyche or soul, which remains relevant to this day. It has three parts: reason, appetite and what the ancient Greeks called thumos (it has no English equivalent, but may be translated as courage, vitality, and spiritedness).

We all have inner conflict, which is the struggle between reason and appetite. Reason is represented by man, symbolising truth or falsity, and appetite (characterised by pain or pleasure) is a monster like the hydra, whose head when chopped off would regenerate more heads, making it an even more dangerous foe. We often use short-term pleasure for long-term suffering, falling into a vicious cycle that can be hard to get out of. The third part, thumos, is represented by the lion – reflecting honour and shared cultural meaning in society. It is the middle region between reason and appetite. This Platonic division of the psyche can be compared to Freud’s ego, super-ego and id, though they have considerable differences.

The task of Socratic self-knowledge to reduce inner conflict begins with the teaching of man (reason), who can train the lion (thumos), and together, tame the monster (appetite).

By seeking self-knowledge in order to lessen our inner conflict, we improve our skills, and are more in contact with reality. Self-transformation and contact with the world are interlinked. We change in order to see the world, and the world changes by disclosing itself in a new way.

Plato depicts thumos as the chariot ride to the soul, to the true, the good, and the beautiful. The charioteer represents the human soul pushed by two winged horses, a mortal dark horse that descends (appetite), and an immortal white horse that ascends (reason). It is only the gods who have two immortal horses. The charioteer must go through a turbulent journey of directing the two horses and stop them from pulling off in different directions, in order to reach the heavens, following the path of enlightenment.

This path allows us to obtain a clearer vision of reality and inner harmony of the fullness of being, allowing us to be more in touch with reality.

Philosophy as an Exercise of Death

Death of the Old Man – Ladislav Mednyanszky

The ancient Greco-Roman philosophers greatly emphasised learning to live, as well as learning to die. Plato alludes to the exercise for death in the Phaedo, whose theme is the death of Socrates and the immortality of the soul. One who has spent his life in philosophy does not fear death, since philosophy is nothing other than an exercise of death. The philosopher spends his time trying to align himself with his soul and separate himself from the body.

The soul to which elevation of thought and the contemplation of the totality of time and of being belong, does not consider human life as important. Such a person will therefore not look on death as something terrible.

In this spiritual exercise, we die to our individuality and unhealthy passions, in order to elevate ourselves to the objectivity of the universal perspective. A lucid anticipation of death shows the authenticity of existence, and it is up to each of us to choose between lucidity and diversion. For that,we must die every day. He who has learned how to die, has unlearned how to serve.

We have been placed on earth in order to contemplate divine creation, and we must not die before we have witnessed its marvels and lived in harmony with nature. Those who practice wisdom are excellent contemplators of nature. They examine the earth, the sea, the sky, the heavens, and all their inhabitants, they provide their souls with wings, so that they may walk on the ether and contemplate the powers that live there. The Platonist philosopher Plutarch writes:

“Does not a good man consider every day a festival? And a very splendid one, to be sure, if we are virtuous. For the world is the most sacred and divine of temples, and the most fitting for the gods. Man is introduced into it by birth to be a spectator: not of artificial, immobile statues, but of the perceptible images of intelligible essences… such as the sun, the moon, the stars, the rivers whose water always flows afresh, and the earth, which sends forth food for plants and animals alike. A life which is a perfect revelation, and an initiation into these mysteries, should be filled with tranquillity and joy.”

Plutarch, On Tranquillity of Mind

Aristotle

Aristotle had studied in the Platonic Academy for twenty years, before founding the Peripatetic school in the temple of the Lyceum. While Plato pointed up to the realm of Ideas, Aristotle was a realist who brought the attention back to this world.

Socrates sought wisdom to overcome self-deception, Plato gave us a structural theory of the psyche to explain how we could reduce our inner conflict, Aristotle, on the other hand, provides us with an account of the growth and development of our character that is connected to our project of wisdom and meaning in life.

Aristotle brings in the notion of change, how we grow and develop, which makes our lives meaningful. Like a snake, we must shed our old skin and renew ourselves or die. Wisdom is the ability to cultivate virtues in order to be reasonable and capable of reflecting upon the things that truly matter to us. Aristotle uses the word akrasia, for the lack of command of ourselves, which is what prevents us from doing the right thing.

Wisdom is not just knowing the right thing to do, but also doing the right thing. To be ignorant is to not know the right to do, and to be foolish is to know the right thing, but still do the wrong thing. It is the battle between reason and appetite. To cultivate our character, realising wisdom, overcoming self-deception, and enhancing the structure of our psyche and our contact with reality, is what it means to be a fully realised, rational being.

The words “actual” and “potential” come from Aristotle. When we “live up to our potential” we are on the path towards a virtuous life, which Aristotle defined as a point between a deficiency and an excess of a trait, the point of the greatest virtue lies not in the exact middle, but a golden mean sometimes closer to one extreme than the other, such as confidence between self-deprecation and vanity. The ancient Greeks call it arete, the pursuit and cultivation of human excellence that allows one to live up to one’s full potential, in order to lead a good life. Virtue is the only real good and is necessary for eudaimonia.

Hellenistic Schools

The practice of askesis is best observed in the Hellenistic schools of philosophy, who defined wisdom as a state of perfect peace of mind. Hadot writes:

“From this viewpoint, philosophy appears as a remedy for human worries, anguish, and misery brought about, for the Cynics, by social constraints and conventions; for the Epicureans, by the quest for false pleasures; for the Stoics, by the pursuit of pleasure and egoistic self-interest; and for the Sceptics, by false opinions.”

Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?

The Hellenistic philosophers agreed with Socrates that human beings are plunged in misery, anguish, and evil because they exist in ignorance. Mankind’s principal cause of suffering are the passions, which have a different meaning than the modern sense of the term. It refers to unregulated desires and exaggerated fears. People are prevented from truly living, it was taught, because they are dominated by worries. Philosophy thus appears, in the first place, as a therapeutic, intended to cure mankind’s anguish. Each school had its own therapeutic method, but all of them profoundly transform the individual’s mode of seeing and being. This choice is the choice of philosophy, and it is thanks to it that we may obtain inner tranquillity and peace of mind.

Cynicism

The philosophy of Cynicism was outlined by Antisthenes, a disciple of Socrates, however Diogenes the Cynic was seen as its archetypal figure. The Cynic, which literally means, dog-like, denounced social conventions and urged a return to living a simple life in conformity with nature. The Cynic way of life was opposed not only to the life of non-philosophers but even to the lives of philosophers. They rejected what most people considered the elementary rules and indispensable conditions for life in society: cleanliness, pleasant appearance, and courtesy. They practiced deliberate shamelessness in public, were not afraid to beg, and despised popular opinion, money and luxury, preferring to live a simple life without possessions. They were without a city, without a home, without a country, miserable, wandering, living from day to day.

“Cynicism was generally considered a philosophy; but it was a philosophy in which philosophical discourse was reduced to a minimum. Take, for instance, the following symbolic anecdote: when someone declared that movement did not exist, Diogenes simply got up and began to walk.”

Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?

The Cynic believed that the state of nature was superior to the conventions of civilisation. Diogenes threw away his bowl and his cup when he saw children do without such utensils, and he drew comfort regarding his way of life when he saw a mouse eat a few crumbs in the dark. The Cynic way of life consisted in training to endure hunger, thirst, harsh weather, so that the individual could acquire freedom, independence, inner strength, relief from worry, and a peace of mind which would be able to adapt itself to all circumstances. According to legend, when Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and granted him any wish, Diogenes replied: “Stand aside, you are blocking the sunlight.” Alexander declared, “If I were not Alexander, then I should wish to be Diogenes.” To which Diogenes replied, “If I were not Diogenes, I would still wish to be Diogenes.”

Diogenes would walk around in the marketplace in full daylight with a lamp, when asked what he was doing, he would answer, “I am looking for a man”. For Diogenes, most people didn’t even qualify as men, they were all rascals and scoundrels. It was a way to expose the hypocrisy and sham of polite social conventions, being worthy of the category “human” demands virtue. A virtuous human, for the Cynics, acts exclusively in accord with nature and in accord with reason. The people who walk around worrying about money, power, and social conventions are the real “madmen”. Diogenes is the only reasonable human being in sight.

He criticised and sabotaged Plato’s lectures, sometimes distracting listeners by bringing food and eating during the discussions. When Plato gave his definition of man as a featherless biped, Diogenes rushed to the Academy with a plucked chicken saying, “Behold! I have brought you a man.” Plato is supposed to have said of Diogenes that he was a “Socrates gone mad.”

Like Socrates, Diogenes thought he had been entrusted with the mission of making people reflect, and of denouncing their vices and errors with his caustic attacks and his way of life.

Pyrrhonism

Pyrrho, a contemporary of Diogenes, can also be considered a somewhat extravagant Socrates. He is considered as the first Greek sceptic philosopher. All of these figures did not write, but simply lived, thereby attracting disciples who imitated their way of life.

Pyrrhonism is a school of philosophical scepticism founded by Pyrrho in the 4^th century BC. Pyrrho’s behaviour corresponds to a choice of life which can be perfectly summed up in one word: indifference. He felt no emotions or change in his dispositions under the influence of external things. He made no difference between what is usually considered dangerous and what is harmless; between tasks judged to be superior and those called inferior; between what is called suffering and what is called pleasure; between life and death. The philosophy is best known through the surviving works of Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus, who wrote:

“For the person who believes that something is by nature good or bad is constantly upset; when he does not possess the things that seem to be good, he thinks he is being tormented by things that are by nature bad, and he chases after the things he supposes to be good; then, when he gets these, he falls into still more torments because of irrational and immoderate exultation, and, fearing any change, he does absolutely everything in order not to lose the things that seem to him good. But the person who takes no position as to what is by nature good or bad neither avoids nor pursues intensely. As a result, he achieves ataraxia.”

Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism

Ataraxia is a Greek term first used by Pyrrho and subsequently by Epicurus and the Stoics to describe a state of unperturbedness, and tranquillity. This is necessary for bringing about eudaimonia.

People’s unhappiness comes from the fact that they want to obtain what they think is good, or to escape what they think is bad. If we refuse to make this kind of distinction, and refrain from making value judgments about things – if we say to ourselves, “This is no better than that”, we will achieve peace and tranquillity. This is known as epoché, the suspension of judgment from all non-evident matters (dogma), which frees us from worry and anxiety.

“Epoché is a state of the intellect on account of which we neither deny nor affirm anything. Ataraxia is an untroubled and tranquil condition of the soul.”

Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism

Thus, according to Pyrrho’s philosophy our goal should be to seek stability in a state of perfect equality with ourselves, in complete indifference, inner freedom, and impassiveness, a state he considered divine. This is no easy task, as it requires stripping off man completely or liberating oneself entirely from the human point of view.

The philosophy of Pyrrho – like that of Socrates, and the Cynics – was thus a lived philosophy, and an exercise of transforming one’s way of life.

Stoicism

Stoicism is a philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in the early 3^rd century BC. For the Stoics, mankind’s woes derive from the fact that he seeks to acquire or to keep possessions that he may either lose or fail to obtain, and from the fact that he tries to avoid misfortunes which are often inevitable. The name Stoic comes from the Stoa Poikile, or painted porch, where Zeno met his followers and taught.

The Stoics did not seek to eliminate their emotions, but rather to be in harmony with them. It is clear that we are not the masters of our own house, and that there are elements in our psyche beyond our control. Our ideas, thoughts, and emotions – which form part of the unconscious – precede our consciousness. The Stoics knew that we have automatic responses that are not under our control, that is why they focused on what is within our control.

In Stoicism, the goal of life is living virtuously in accordance with nature, which is good and rational, driven by Logos. Nothing natural is evil, and since we are all interconnected by Logos, when a man does wrong to another man, they are hurting themselves.

“What injures the hive injures the bee.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

The ideal stage of the Stoic sage is apatheia (literally, without pathos or passions),which is slightly different from ataraxia, though the Stoics use both terms. One way to see the relationship between the two is that apatheia, the freedom from the disturbance of wild emotional fluctuations, leads to ataraxia, a state of tranquillity. In other words, ataraxia is a by-product. Apatheia is not to be confused with the modern idea of apathy, but rather as a state of equanimity.

The Stoics divided philosophy in three parts: logic, physics, and ethics. Here we must distinguish between discourse about philosophy and philosophy itself. It is important to have a theory of these three parts when it comes to teaching philosophy, however, the philosophical way of life is no longer a theory divided into parts, but a unitary act, which consists in living logic, physics, and ethics. We no longer study logical theory, that is, the theory of speaking and thinking well – we simply think and speak well, perfectly aware not only of what we are doing, but also of what we are thinking. We no longer engage in theory about the physical world, but we contemplate our place within the cosmos. We no longer theorise about moral action, but we act in a correct and just way. As Marcus Aurelius writes:

“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

For the Stoics, as for the rival school of Epicureanism, physics was not developed for its own sake but had an ethical finality: Stoic physics was indispensable for ethics because it showed people that there are some things which are not in their power but depend on causes external to them.

Everything that depends on us are moral good and evil. Everything else which does not depend on us refers to the necessary linkage of cause and effect, which is not subject to our freedom. We are to switch from our “human” vision of reality to a “natural” vision of things.

Prosochē is the fundamental Stoic spiritual attitude, it is the development of one’s ability to pay attention, it is a continuous vigilance and presence of mind, self-consciousness which never sleeps, and a constant tension of the soul. The Stoics would agree with G.K. Chesterton, who wrote:

“For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point and does not break.”

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Thanks to his spiritual vigilance, the Stoic always has “at hand” the fundamental rule of life: the distinction between what depends on us and what does not. Also known as the dichotomy of control. We must focus on that which is within our control, and to be indifferent to that which is beyond our control. In other words, to be indifferent to indifferent things. Wisdom comes from focusing one’s attention on what truly matters. The Serenity Prayer echoes the same message:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

The Serenity Prayer

One may ask oneself, “Can I do something about this situation? If not, why am I worrying? Since it is outside my control, it is pointless to worry about. And nothing is worth doing pointlessly.” Attention to the present moment, is in a sense, the key to spiritual exercises. As such, the Stoics would engrave striking maxims in their memory, often written in an enchiridion (manual or handbook), which they would carry with them, and meditate on every day, so that, when the time comes, they could face their fear, sadness, anger and events beyond their control. The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is a clear example of this.

Premeditatio Malorum

In the Stoic exercise of premeditatio malorum or negative visualisation, we are to think of poverty, suffering, and death. We must not be afraid to think in advance about events which other people consider unfortunate, and embrace our fate, whatever happens, because it does not depend on us. The willing are led by fate, the reluctant are dragged. We should appreciate what we have, instead of wishing for things to be different. Epictetus writes:

“Do not seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will—then your life will flow well.”

Epictetus, Enchiridion

Negative visualisation makes one better equipped to endure the inevitable suffering of life. This exercise is quite different from over-thinking, or rumination – which we do not control, but rather controls us – and is the result of being a slave to one’s passions.

“The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the colour of your thoughts.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Much of the time, we suffer not because of events happening to us, but what we think will happen to us. We suffer more in imagination than in reality. One can only conquer the darkness by going through it. By seeking to escape the darkness, we remain inescapably bound to it.

Memento Mori

Memento mori or meditating on your mortality is another spiritual exercise important to the Stoics. We take many things for granted in life, until some radical misfortune in our lives happens to us and awakens us from “life as sleep”, making us realise how little attention we paid to things that truly matter. We are all sleepwalkers in life until some inexplicable or life-threatening experience, which can activate our thinking about death, awakens us from our deep slumber. This combines both horror and awe at the same time. Marcus Aurelius writes:

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

We must accomplish each of life’s actions as if it were the last. These are not just thought exercises, but are supposed to transform our entire being and throw us back to what truly matters in life, making our crooked path straight.

Voluntary Discomfort

The Lonely Boat Man – Asha Sudhaker Shenoy

Another exercise is voluntary discomfort, which is more of a physical exercise, rather than a mental one. Though both can be just as transformative. Voluntary discomfort is like climbing a mountain, there are obstacles and difficulties ahead, one can even risk falling from the heights and injuring oneself. However, once you reach the top of the mountain, you’ll be able to see the most beautiful views imaginable.

In his book, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, the philosopher William Irvine gives an example of voluntary discomfort:

“When I row competitively, it may look as though I am trying to beat the other rowers, but I am in fact engaged in a much more significant competition: the one against my other self. He didn’t want to learn to row. He didn’t want to do workouts, preferring instead to spend the predawn hours asleep in a warm bed… (“If you just quit rowing,” he would say in his most seductive voice, “all this pain would come to an end. Why not just quit? Think of how good it would feel!”). It is curious, but my competitors in a race are simultaneously my teammates in the much more important competition against my other self. By racing against each other, we are all simultaneously racing against ourselves, although not all of us are consciously aware of doing so. To race against each other, we must individually overcome ourselves – our fears, our laziness, our lack of self-discipline. And it is entirely possible for someone to lose the competition against the other rowers – indeed, to come in last – but in the process of doing so to have triumphed in the competition against his other self.”

William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

Our worst enemy is so close to us that we cannot see it, for we are our worst enemy. To conquer ourselves is the most difficult task, and is part of the lifelong task of self-knowledge.

Epicureanism

Epicureanism is a philosophy founded in the 4^th century BC by ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. For the Epicureans, people’s unhappiness come from the fact that they are afraid of things which are not to be feared, and desire things which it is not necessary to desire. Consequently, their life is consumed in worries over unjustified fears and unsatisfied desires. As a result, they are deprived of the only genuine pleasure there is: the pleasure of existing. It is the freedom from unjustified desire, pain and fear that leads to ataraxia.

In terms of fear, Epicurus believes that our main fears come from the gods and of death. The Stoic universe is characterised by providence: system, order and design; while the Epicurean universe is defined by atom: dispersal, chaos, chance. For Epicurus, the gods have nothing to do with the creation of the universe, and do not care about the conduct of the world or human beings; and on the other hand, death is nothing for us, for the soul is made up of atoms, like the body, it disintegrates at death and loses all sensory capacity. He writes:

“Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.”

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

The Epicureans would also practice memento mori, as it can awaken in our souls an immense gratitude for the marvellous gift of existence. We must persuade ourselves that each new day that dawns will be our last, then we will receive each unexpected hour with gratitude.

The method for achieving a stable pleasure consists in an askesis of desire based on a tripartite distinction: desires which are natural and necessary; desires which are natural and not necessary; and empty desires, which are neither natural nor necessary.

Natural and necessary desires are those whose satisfaction delivers people from pain, and which correspond to the elementary needs or vital necessities. Natural but not necessary are, for example, desires for sumptuous foods and for sexual gratification. Neither natural nor necessary, but produced by empty opinions, are the limitless desires for wealth, glory, and immortality. An Epicurean saying aptly sums up this division of desires: “Thanks be to blessed Nature, who has made necessary things easy to obtain, and who has made things difficult to obtain unnecessary.”

For the Epicureans, we must concern ourselves with the healing of our own lives. Healing consists in bringing one’s soul back from the worries of life to the simple joy of existing. As an Epicurean saying states: “Vain is the word of that philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man.” For just as there is no value in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no value in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.

The cries of the flesh are: not to be hungry, not to be thirsty, not to be cold. For if one enjoys the possession of this, and the hope of continuing to possess it, he might rival even Zeus in happiness. Epicurus writes:

“We do what we do in order to avoid suffering and fear. When once we have succeeded in this, the tempest of the soul is entirely dissipated, for the living being now no longer needs to move toward anything as if he lacked it, or to seek something else by which the good of the soul and body might be achieved. For we have need of pleasure precisely when we are suffering from the absence of pleasure. When we are not suffering from this lack, we do not need pleasure.”

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

Pleasure as the suppression of suffering is the absolute good. It cannot be increased, and no new pleasure can be added to it, just as a clear sky cannot get any brighter. This leads to becoming aware of something extraordinary, already present in us unconsciously, the pleasure of our own existence.

To cure the soul, it is not necessary, as the Stoics would have it, to train it to stretch itself tight, but rather to train it to relax. Instead of picturing misfortunes in advance, so as to be prepared to bear them, we must rather detach our thoughts from the vision of painful things, and fix our eyes on pleasurable ones. We are to relive memories of past pleasures, and enjoy the pleasures of the present, recognising how intense and agreeable these present pleasures are. Hadot writes:

“We have here a quite distinctive spiritual exercise, different from the constant vigilance of the Stoic, with his constant readiness to safeguard his moral liberty at each instant. Instead, Epicureanism preaches the deliberate, continually renewed choice of relaxation and serenity, combined with a profound gratitude toward nature and life, which constantly offer us joy and pleasure, if only we know how to find them.”

Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life

For the Epicureans, in the last analysis, pleasure is a spiritual exercise. Not pleasure in the form of mere sensual gratification, but the intellectual pleasure derived from contemplating nature, the thought of pleasures past and present, and lastly the pleasure of friendship. Friendship itself was, as it were, the spiritual exercise par excellence. Masters and disciples helped one another closely, in order to obtain a cure for their souls. The main goal was to be happy, and mutual affection and the confidence with which the Epicureans relied upon each other contributed more than anything to this happiness.

Epicurean philosophy can be summarised in the following fourfold remedy:

“The gods are not to be feared,

Death is not to be dreaded;

What is good is easy to acquire

What is bad is easy to bear.”

Philodemus, Herculaneum Papyri

The Epicureans would stay in the Garden of Epicurus, which became a symbol of Epicurean philosophy. Epicurus died a slow and painful death from kidney stones at the age of 72. Despite being in immense pain, Epicurus is said to have remained cheerful and to have continued to teach until the very end. For him, to practice living well and to practice dying well are one and the same. He stayed true to his philosophy till the very end.

Similarities Epicureanism & Stoicism

Though the Epicureans and Stoics are different in their philosophies, they have many similarities: intense meditation on fundamental maxims, the ever-renewed awareness of the finitude of life, examination of one’s conscience, and, above all, a specific attitude toward time – to live in the present, letting ourselves be neither troubled by the past, nor worried by the uncertainty of the future. Each instant has an infinite value, wisdom is just as perfect and complete in one instant as it is throughout an eternity. Our happiness is urgent, for the future is uncertain and death is a constant threat. Any length of life is sufficient if lived wisely, and while we are waiting to live, life passes us by.

Neoplatonism

Plotinus is considered to be the founder of Neoplatonism, a philosophy that appeared in the 3^rd century AD, as a grand synthesis of an intellectual heritage that was by then exceedingly rich and profound. They took inspiration from Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and religion. It is a sum-total of ideas produced over centuries of sustained inquiry into the human condition.

Behind the façade of the natural and visible world of matter, there are three levels of reality that describe levels of inner life, levels of the self: the soul, nous (intellect or mind), and the One or the Good. These are three hypostases, fundamental underlying substances that support all of reality. Everything eternally emanates from the One, however, there is no cause and effect, for it is not a being, but being itself.

The One creates the many, life depends on this highest divine unitary principle, for it is absolute reality. Nous is the highest activity of life, which turns back towards the One in order to understand the precondition of its own existence, it is ontologically prior to the physical realm typically taken for ultimate reality (mind over matter).

In the identity of thoughts with its objects, the ideal world of all forms and ideas came to be conceptualised. The soul falls out of the inner activity of nous, and lies at the heart of Neoplatonism, which is a philosophy of the soul or psychology. The soul becomes informed by the images of the eternal forms and gives birth to the entire universe and biosphere on earth. It is the general phenomenon of life capable of animating matter. The soul does not reside in the body, it is the corporeal and sensible world that rests in the soul. For all the other-worldliness of Neoplatonism, it needs to be emphasised that the material world they inhabited was for this reason an essentially good, divine, and beautiful place.

For the Neoplatonists, the purpose of life was to bring back the god in us to the divine in the All, as Plotinus pressed upon his followers on the very point of his death. The goal is not the mundane fulfilment of life within the bounds of what is humanly possible, but nothing less than eudaimonia in its most expansive sense, deification.

Plotinus describes spiritual exercise as not merely knowing the One, but becoming identical with it, in a complete annihilation of individuality. It is here where, in a fleeting blaze of light, there takes place the metamorphosis of the self.

“Then the seer no longer sees his object, for in that instant he no longer distinguishes himself from it; he no longer has the impression of two separate things, but he has, in a sense, become another. He is no longer himself, nor does he belong to himself, but he is one with the One, as the centre of one circle coincides with the centre of another.”

Plotinus, Enneads

For Hadot, the Neoplatonic metaphysics of the One is not purely theoretical or abstract, but used to express an inner experience, which is fundamental yet inexpressible. The human self is inextricably bound with the transcendent One. Plotinus experienced this mystical union of becoming One with the divine four times, after this experience he wrote:

“[H]ow is it possible that I should come down now, and how was it ever possible for my soul to come to be within my body.”

Plotinus, Enneads

Plotinus was not only a philosopher, but also a spiritual guide. The realisation of the One turns one’s attention away from vain preoccupations and exaggerated worries. The concept of theurgy (working with God) becomes an important concept for the Neoplatonists. It designates rituals capable of purifying the soul, and its immediate vehicle, the astral body, and thus allowing it to contemplate the gods. The only thing that can bring about our union with the gods is not theoretical philosophy, but rites which we do not understand. Hadot writes:

“For Neoplatonism and Christianity, the two spiritual movements which dominated the end of antiquity and opposed each other, man cannot save himself by his own strength but must wait for the divine to take the initiative.”

Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?

We must never stop sculpting our own statue, until the divine splendour of virtue shines in us. The soul’s immateriality is transformed into experience when one liberates and purifies oneself from the passions, which conceal the true reality of the soul. The quest for self-transformation is well symbolised by the image of sculpting one’s own nature. The statue pre-existed in the marble block, and it was enough to take away what was superfluous in order to cause it to appear. Let the soul practice virtue, and it will understand that it is immortal.

All ancient schools of philosophy agree that man, before his philosophical conversion, is in a state of unhappy disquiet. Consumed by worries, torn by passions, he does not live a genuine life, nor is he truly himself. However, he can attain a state of tranquillity, through a process of transformation. Happiness consists in independence, freedom, and autonomy. It is the return to the essential, that which is truly “ourselves”, and which depends on us. Hadot writes:

“This is obviously true in Platonism, where we find the famous image of Glaucos, the god who lives in the depths of the sea. Covered as he is with mud, seaweed, seashells, and pebbles, Glaucos is unrecognisable, and the same holds true for the soul: the body is a kind of thick, coarse crust, covering and completely disfiguring it, and the soul’s true nature would appear only if it rose up out of the sea, throwing off everything alien to it. The spiritual exercise of apprenticeship for death, which consists in separating oneself from the body, its passions, and its desires, purifies the soul from all these superfluous additions.”

Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life

Between the Stoic distinction of what depends on us and what doesn’t, we can reject all that is alien to us, and return to our true selves. The same holds true for Epicureanism, by ignoring unnatural and unnecessary desires, we can be free by satisfying natural and necessary desires. Thus, all spiritual exercises are, fundamentally, a return to the self, in which the self is liberated from the state of alienation into which it has been plunged by worries, passions, and desires.

Each philosophy depends on one’s individual personality type. No single philosophy fits everyone, and one should find which philosophy or philosophies best suits one’s own life. This self-knowledge is ultimately the search for oneself.

View from Above: Cosmic Consciousness

Many ancient philosophers practiced the spiritual exercise of the View from Above, in which one moves to a third-person point of view and steps back from one’s narrow view of things. This imaginative overflight is not to see human affairs as insignificant, but rather to enrich one’s life with cosmic significance. The ancient sage was conscious of living in the cosmos, and he placed himself in harmony with it. The totality of the cosmos is contained and implied in each instant.

This cosmic consciousness transcends the limits of individuality, expanding the ego into the infinity of universal nature, liberating oneself from the worries and pains produced by our passions, and rising to the universal demands of the Logos. That is to say, to see the world, and our place in it, not as we’d like it to be, but as it is. In this brief instant, we experience the world as “just this”, or “suchness”. It is the stunning realisation of coidentity with the world, an oceanic experience and elimination of the boundary between subject and object.

The All has no need to come in order to be present. If it is not present, it is because one has distanced oneself from it.

“Philosophy in antiquity was an exercise practiced at each instant. It invites us to concentrate on each instant of life, to become aware of the infinite value of each present moment, once we have replaced it within the perspective of the cosmos. The exercise of wisdom entails a cosmic dimension. Whereas the average person has lost touch with the world, and does not see the world qua world, but rather treats the world as a means of satisfying his desires, the sage never ceases to have the whole constantly present to mind. He thinks and acts within a cosmic perspective. He has the feeling of a whole which goes beyond the limits of his individuality.”

Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life

Philosophy: The Love of Wisdom | A Guide to Life

Ancient philosophy proposed to mankind an art of living. By contrast modern philosophy appears above all as the construction of a technical jargon reserved for specialists.

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A Cornfield by Moonlight with the Evening Star – Samuel Palmer

The Psychology of The Wounded Healer

One must be wounded to become a healer. Many people, however, experience suffering and do not become healers; practically everyone could become a healer if it depended only on the experience of suffering. It is only by overcoming suffering and having been wounded that one may become a healer.

We have to follow the way of our psychological maturation to discover the reason for our suffering, because the reason is something unique in each individual. That is why in seeking the meaning of your suffering you seek the meaning of your life.

“[T]he wounded healer is the archetype of the Self – one of its most widespread features – and is at the bottom of all genuine healing procedures.”

Marie-Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung is credited with coining the phrase wounded healer, but this term is never used by him in his works¸ instead he used “wounded physician”. Jung did not see himself as someone who had accomplished the healing of his patients. The healing is an individual affair which must emerge from the patient’s own psyche, in order for there to be a resolution to the problem, which is precisely what the term individuation implies. The cure ought to grow naturally out of the wounded individual, one must find the light that is hidden within the darkness.

As long as we feel victimised, bitter and resentful towards our wound, and seek to escape from suffering it, we remain inescapably bound to it. This is neurotic suffering, as opposed to the authentic suffering of the wounded healer which is purified. The wound can destroy you, or it can wake you up.

Table of contents

Chiron: The Wounded Healer

Chiron and Achilles – J.B. Regnault (Lithograph)

The Greek god Apollo is a sunlike healer who can cure all ills, but is also the bringer of disease and death with his arrows. He is the unwounded healer. Apollo raised Chiron, who is a centaur, half human, and half horse, but unlike the rest of centaurs who were wild and intoxicated, Chiron was wise, just, and also immortal. He became a skilled healer. One day, however, Chiron was accidentally wounded by a poisoned arrow. But despite being skilled in healing the wounds of others, he was unable to heal his own wound. He suffered excruciating pain for the rest of his life. It was because of his grievous wound that Chiron became known as a legendary healer in ancient Greece. The secret of healing is inside the wound, which contains the medicine. True health comes from acceptance of our wounds.

Chiron’s nobility is further reflected in the story of his death. He exchanged his immortality for the life of Prometheus, who had been punished by the Gods for stealing fire and giving it to mankind, that is, gave us consciousness, freeing us from being unconscious puppets of the gods. Consciousness is deeply traumatic, but it is also the greatest gift we have been given.

Chiron suffered the punishment meant for Prometheus, and Zeus seeing this, pitied him. In his honour, Chiron was given a place in the stars, becoming the constellation Centaurus. Chiron represents our immortal wound that can never heal, and at the same time, he is the potential source of our greatest capacity to heal, particularly other people.

Christ is the biblical version of the same fundamental image. The difference is that Chiron had no choice in the matter because the wound happens to him and he cannot heal himself; Christ volunteered for the role, and could have escaped from his suffering, but did not. Both are healers, both are wounded, and both transcend to the heavens at the end. This image is to be distinguished from the healthy healer – Apollo, Chiron before the wound caused by the poisoned arrow, and Christ before his crucifixion. The wounded healer combines both the healthy and the suffering. This is what Saint Paul meant by the “thorn in his flesh”

Asclepius: The Greek God of Healing

Asclepius with his serpent-entwined staff; Archaeological Museum of Epidaurus

Chiron was highly revered as a teacher and instructed Asclepius in the arts of medicine, who became the Greek god of healing. Asclepius was the son of a mortal woman named Coronis, whom Apollo had fallen in love with. However, while she was pregnant, she displayed infidelity by sleeping with a mortal man. She was killed for her betrayal, and Apollo was unable to bring her back to life. As she lay on her funeral pyre, Apollo rescued the child by cutting him from her womb, thus Asclepius is born – saved from death, so that he might grow up to heal others.

He holds the Rod of Asclepius, a snake-entwined staff associated with healing, which remains a symbol of medicine to this day. This is not to be confused with the caduceus (a symbol of commerce) of the Greek deity Hermes, which is entwined by two snakes, and sometimes has wings too.

Statue of Hermes wearing the petasos and a voyager’s cloak, and carrying the caduceus and a purse. Roman copy after a Greek original (Vatican Museums)

Our woundedness can put us into a miserable state of suffering and pain, or it can be a source of healing. The wounded healer refers to the capacity:

“[T]o be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery with which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepius, the sunlike healer.”

Karl Kerényi, Asclepius: Archetypal Image of the Physician’s Existence

Asclepius became such a proficient healer that he was able to bring other mortal men back to life. This caused an abundance of human beings on earth, and Hades, the god of the underworld, complained to his brother Zeus about it. Zeus became angry at Asclepius for transgressing the boundary between humanity and the gods. Men are mortal, and only the gods are free from death. In punishment for his crime, he struck Asclepius with a thunderbolt and sent him to Hades. So that he, though a god, might himself experience the fate of mortals. Later, however, he was resurrected and given a place on Mount Olympus, the home of the gods. Asclepius becomes the only god to experience death, making him one of the most admired, loved, and worshipped deities of the Greeks.

Asclepieia: Healing Temples

The heart of the Epidaurus sanctuary. The Tholos and the Abaton (left) and the Temple of Asclepius (center right) – DeAgostini

In ancient Greece, there were healing temples dedicated to Asclepius called asclepieia, known to cure people of all sorts of physical and spiritual illness. Among the most popular was the one located in Epidaurus, the most celebrated healing centre of the classical world. Many pilgrims would visit the temple and have a cleansing diet, as well as a bath thought to have a positive effect on the body and the soul. Health, cleanliness, and sanitation are all aspects of the goddess Hygieia, whose name is the source for the word “hygiene” and who is one of the daughters of Asclepius.

The Therapeutae of Asclepius would guide the patients. The term therapeute derives from ancient Greek, and refers to one who serves the gods, and later on, one who heals or helps a person to heal himself – which is precisely the task of a therapist. After a few days of preparation, the therapeute would lead the sick person to a small empty stone chamber with a platform in which he could lay down and sleep, left alone with his dreams and with the god.

This is theurgical work, that is, a practice consisting of working with God, rather than theology, or talking with God. The idea was to achieve theophany, a personal encounter with a deity. Many dreams describe Asclepius appearing in his human-like form and seen applying an ointment to the afflicted parts, or theriomorphically as a snake or as a dog, licking the wound and thus healing it.

In the dormitories of the temple, snakes slithered around freely on the floor. For the Greeks, snakes were not just chthonic beings, but also sacred beings of wisdom, healing, and resurrection. The snakes used were non-venomous, now known as the Aesculapian snakes, named in honour of the god of healing.

The snake was seen as emblematic of the mysterious relationship between death and rebirth. Dogs too were associated with underworld experience, like the three-headed Cerberus welcoming the dead to Hades.

After spending the night in the holiest place of the sanctuary, the patient’s dream would simply be recorded. If Asclepius appeared in one’s dream, it was understood as the healing event itself. Unlike in Delphi, where the oracle who would give prophetic advice to the seekers through God, at Epidaurus it was the patient who had the healing vision. In the classical Greek period, the dream was the cure. At a later period, however, dreams and visions would be reported to a therapeute who would prescribe the appropriate healing process, including a visit to the baths, or gymnasium. One might say that it was the first psychotherapeutic centre.

The final rituals consisted of a paean, a song of praise to the god in gratitude for what he had given to the patient, and finally there would be a sacrifice of a rooster as a token that daylight has overcome the dark, health has overcome sickness. These methods were known to be highly effective as is evident by numerous written accounts by patients attesting to their healing and providing detailed accounts of their cure.

This ties in with Socrates’ enigmatic last words when he decided to take his own life by drinking hemlock: “Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Pay it and do not neglect it.” Socrates invokes the only god known to revive the dead, thanking him for healing him of the sickness of life by the cure of death. Socrates lives right into his death.

The healing of Asclepius provides a respite to those who are not yet ready for death. He gives time for us to attend to the health of our souls, and to prepare for the inevitability that lies ahead. Death is the great equaliser. Asclepius does not promise that there won’t be death, the point of healing is to give one time to prepare for death.

“There was a crown on the colossal head of Asclepius… A golden wreath always represents rays and symbolises the sunlike. Such an honour, even if legendary, bears witness to what in the living religion of Asclepius constituted the nature of the Asclepiad, the true physician. For the medical gift that the Asclepiads held they had inherited from their solar ancestor is a very special gift: it is neither a religious nor a philosophical knowledge… but is rather a familiarity, which can never be acquired, with sickness and the process of recovery. It is a spark of intuitive knowledge about the possibilities of rising from the depths, a spark which by observation, practice, and training can be fanned into a high art and science: into a true art of healing.”

Karl Kerényi, Asclepius: Archetypal Image of the Physician’s Existence

Illness and healing are not opposites, but rather inseparable aspects of a deeper process that is being revealed through their interplay. The sunlike healer, symbolises that, just like the self-generating light of the sun, the ultimate source of our healing is to be found within ourselves.

The Importance of Death

For Friedrich Nietzsche, a natural death is not to be mourned, but celebrated. He writes:

“Many die too late, and some die too early. The doctrine still sounds strange: “Die at the right time!”… To be sure, how could the person who never lives at the right time ever die at the right time? Would that he were never born! – Thus I advise the superfluous… Everyone regards dying as important; but death is not yet a festival. As of yet people have not learned how to consecrate the most beautiful festivals. I show you the consummating death that becomes a goad and a promise to the living. The consummated one dies his death, victorious, surrounded by those who hope and promise. Thus one should learn to die; and there should be no festival where such a dying person does not swear oaths to the living!”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The Greeks believed that old age was not a life stage but a stage of transition between life and death. For Jung, it is part of the second half of life, and is psychologically as important as birth. The denial of death only leads to further neurosis, death is inevitable and to fight against it is to fight against life itself.

Just as a young person needs to learn to live, an old person has to come to terms with death, and for that, one must have a personal myth, which is created by observing our inner life through dreams, active imagination, intuitions, and synchronicities. Jung writes:

“Death is an important interest, especially to an aging person. A categorical question is being put to him, and he is under an obligation to answer it. To this end he ought to have a myth about death, for reason shows him nothing but the dark pit into which he is descending. Myth, however, can conjure up other images for him, helpful and enriching pictures of life in the land of the dead. If he believes in them, or greets them with some measure of credence, he is being just as right or just as wrong as someone who does not believe in them. But while the man who despairs marches toward nothingness, the one who has placed his faith in the archetype follows the tracks of life and lives right into his death. Both, to be sure, remain in uncertainty, but the one lives against his instincts, the other with them.”

Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Jung’s entire psychology is predicated on the existence of psychic oppositions in the human psyche. It is the tension of opposites that gives rise to our wholeness, the enantiodromic principle of the union of opposites carves a path to the Self.

There are two phases in life: the first phase in which we are oriented outwardly, and the second phase in which our focus shifts inward during midlife. Individuation is a reconciliation of both inner and outer life.

“The actual processes of individuation—the conscious coming-to-terms with one’s own inner centre (psychic nucleus) or Self—generally begins with a wounding of the personality and the suffering that accompanies it. This initial shock amounts to a sort of “call,” although it is not often recognised as such.”

Man and His Symbols. Part III: The Process of Individuation – M.L. von Franz

We need to learn from our own experiences of being wounded, to release ourselves from what may be the most serious illness of all, the fantasy of a health without wounds, a life without death.

The Wound as Initiation: Hero’s Journey

Those with a healing career end up profoundly wounded or even die as is shown in the stories of Chiron, Asclepius and Christ. It is a given that if one enters into the role of healer, at some point one will be severely wounded.

To become individuated is no easy task, it is a very painful process, equivalent to bearing our own cross as Christ did on his way to being crucified. The wound is our initiation into our fragmented self, it is the call to adventure that begins the hero’s journey.

“The hero’s main feat is to overcome the monster of darkness: it is the long-hoped-for and expected triumph of consciousness over the unconscious.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 9.1: Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

When the hero overcomes the monster, he finds the treasure, the princess, the elixir of life, etc., which are psychological metaphors for one’s true feelings and unique potential. Jung wrote:

“In myths the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by it. And yet both have to deal with the same dragon. Also, he is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if he once saw it, declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Equally, only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the “treasure hard to attain.” He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby has gained himself… He has acquired the right to believe that he will be able to overcome all future threats by the same means.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 14: Mysterium Coniunctionis

The mythologist Joseph Campbell expanded on Jung’s ideas with his popular conception of the hero’s journey, which is not just a story but a deeply embedded myth that explains the human condition.

The call to adventure occurs when we are separated from our ordinary world of comfort and must tread into unknown and dangerous territory, and that causes anxiety. This often leads to refusal, which slowly deteriorates one’s life and relationships. There comes a point where the wounds become too much to bear, and one must tend to them.

Going through our wound is a genuine death experience, as our old self “dies” in the process, while a new, more expansive and empowered self is born.

The Sacred and The Profane

In his book, The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion, Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade describes the sacred and the profane as two existential situations assumed by mankind throughout history. From the perspective of religious thought, the manifestation of the sacred (hierophany) is what gives meaning, structure, and orientation to the world.

The sacred is akin to the Platonic world of forms, which exist beyond space and time. It is the home of the universal, the immortal, and the eternal. The profane, on the other hand, contains everything concrete, mortal, and temporal. Since it is a place of constant becoming, it is a place of decay and death.

Eliade uses the term archetype (not to be confused with Jung’s definition) to express the manifestations of the sacred, which we gain access to by repetition, imitation, and participation in the divine patterns. Religious behaviour does not only commemorate, but also participates in, sacred events. Our ancestors interacted with the sacred, because without it, man is nothing but dust and ashes. However, the sacred also produces a feeling of terror before its awe-inspiring mystery (mysterium tremendum), and religious fear before the fascinating mystery (mysterium fascinans) in which perfect fullness of being flowers. These are all numinous experiences, induced by the revelation of the divine.

“To whatever degree he may have desacralised the world, the man who has made his choice in favour of a profane life never succeeds in completely doing away with his religious behaviour.”

Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and The Profane

Celebrations and rituals depict the idea of what Eliade calls the eternal return, that is, a reconnection with the mythical age. This behaviour is still emotionally present with us, in one form or another, ready to be reactualised in our deepest being.

Each year becomes a repetition of the mythical age, and we can step into the divine realm, transporting us back to the world of origins. Time is not a linear succession of events, but a circle. Linear time, and the lack of any inherent value on the march of historical events (the terror of history), is one of the reasons for modern man’s anxieties.

The Wound as Initiation: Shamanism

The Ancestor of the North – Susan Seddon Boulet

Eliade describes sicknesses, dreams, and ecstasies as a shamanic initiation, which is not resolved until one transforms the profane into the sacred. Eliade makes it clear that shamanism is not any kind of mental disease, but rather a temporal crisis that expresses the human condition.

In shamanic initiations the initiate often experiences an illness of some type which is not resolved until the individual practices shamanic exercises such as drumming and chanting until he is cured. He is then regarded as a shaman in the community and has the role of a healer.

“The primitive magician, the medicine man or shaman is not only a sick man, he is above all, a sick man who has been cured, who has succeeded in curing himself.”

Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

Accounts of the shaman’s inner journey of turmoil and distress, expressed through the ecstatic action of trance, reveals the venerated images of the awakened psyche, living symbols that encompass the wider human experience. Through creative expression, the human condition is elevated, mythologised, and, at last, collectively understood.

The lifeway of the shaman is nearly as old as human consciousness itself, predating the earliest recorded civilisations by thousands of years. A common thread seems to connect all shamans across the planet. An awakening to other orders of reality, the experience of ecstasy, and an opening up of visionary realms. The entrance to the other world occurs through the action of total disruption, a crisis involving a psychological and spiritual death. There are many similarities between these archaic rituals and the experience people undergo in psychotherapy.

Compensatory function

A Dead Poet Being Carried by a Centaur – Gustave Moreau

Often people embark on a helping profession because they want to address their personal wounds: dysfunctional childhood, abuse, inferiority complex, etc., in order to heal themselves and help others with their own healing processes. Psychologically, we all have a compensatory function in our lives. A person who has a lack of self-worth, may appear outwardly to be very confident. A person who thinks he is not smart, may spend a long time reading books and acquiring a vast wealth of knowledge, and at every opportunity, expresses this knowledge to others. Our feelings of inferiority are part of the shadow, and the persona (our social mask which we present to others) is our compensation for what is lying in our shadow. An overcompensation can cause someone to act in complete opposition to what he feels emotionally, and thus he conceals his true self. His problems are repressed and never faced constructively, and the shadow grows larger and darker.

Repetition Compulsion

A traumatic and abusive childhood can cause what Freud calls repetition compulsion, an unconscious need to repeat traumatic events, which shows up in different situations, but has the same underlying archetypal pattern. This can extend to all sorts of relationships in one’s life: with one’s parents, friends, partner, children, etc. Every repetition, makes the problem worse and more complex. Our unconscious tries to heal us by reconstellating (re-activating) these situations as an opportunity to come into a new relationship with the underlying pattern, to convert the poison into healing.

Pharmakon: Poison and Cure

Journey of the Wounded Healer – Alex Grey

The contradictory opposites of poison and cure is expressed in the Greek word pharmakon, a drug can be both beneficial and harmful. The wounded healer is one who takes his wounds seriously, and transforms his poison into a gift to bestow upon others. This applies to the relationship between therapist and patient too. Jung wrote:

“We could say, without too much exaggeration, that a good half of every treatment that probes at all deeply consists in the doctor’s examining himself, for only what he can put right in himself can he hope to put right in the patient. It is no loss, either, if he feels that the patient is hitting him, or even scoring off him: it is his own hurt that gives the measure of his power to heal. This, and nothing else, is the meaning of the Greek myth of the wounded physician.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy

Therapist as Wounded Healer

Freud and Jung were modern wounded healers. Freud in the last sixteen years of his life, was tormented unceasingly by his cancer of the jaw, until it lead to his death. Jung was on the brink of taking his own life in his period of the confrontation with his unconscious. A month before his death, too frail for his daily walk, Jung was driven around some of his favourite roads, saying goodbye to the countryside. Despite their suffering, they continued to write and practise, transmuting their poison into a healing potion, like true alchemists.

However, it is not just the therapist alone who does the healing. It is common for the patient to project onto the analyst the image of the healer, and when there is no progress, the patient gets angry and perhaps leaves therapy, and eventually comes back again. This is known as transference and is a typical phenomenon in therapy. The patient can, for instance, unconsciously transfer his feelings about his abusive father onto the analyst, and the analyst must be careful not to engage in countertransference, in which the patient reminds the analyst of someone in his or her life.

The analyst has to be prepared to not project his wounds on the already wounded patient. They must develop a clear map of their wounds, in which they are able to describe their experiences of being wounded, how they felt during their vulnerable period, and how they dealt with it. Our wounds can become a wellspring of healing for another.

“The doctor is effective only when he himself is affected. Only the wounded physician heals.”

Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections

The analyst takes the suffering of the patient, shares it with him, and suffers with him. This has a healing effect, just as the suffering of Christ is mysteriously curative for others, “by his wounds we are healed.”

Jung learned through his practice that only the analyst who feels himself deeply affected by his patients could heal, and the analyst cannot take the patient to a place the analyst has never been. This is not only a matter of empathy but of knowledge (“gnosis”) of what soul work is and how it matters. At some point, the patient must also realise that the potential for healing resides within himself or herself. The analyst acts as a psychopomp or spiritual guide for the patient. It can be extremely helpful to have allies in order to defeat one’s dragon, which symbolises one’s fears, obstacles, hardships, or repressions. But, one must deal the final blow to the dragon oneself. Jung wrote:

“The crucial point is that I confront the patient as one human being to another. Analysis is a dialogue demanding two partners. Analyst and patient sit facing one another, eye to eye, the doctor has something to say, but so has the patient.”

Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections

While the analyst performs the role of a healer, his wounds live a shadowy existence, and can be reconstellated in particular situations, especially when working with someone whose wounds are similar. The shadow of the wounded patient, on the other hand, is his inner healer.

Therefore, the unconscious relationship between analyst and analysand is as important as what is consciously communicated, in terms of the healing process. It can be a transformative experience for both people.

Healing can take place only if the analyst has an ongoing relationship with the unconscious. Otherwise, he or she may identify with the healer archetype, a common form of inflation. This is known as an Asclepius complex, where the therapist takes healing too far, just as Asclepius brought back people from the dead. The therapist believes he has god-like powers of healing, and that there’s no need for a personal relationship.

Jung had a dream in which his patient was a giant and he was very small. Dreams are often compensatory in nature, therefore, Jung realised that he had been looking down at the patient. When he adjusted his attitude, the relationship and the healing of the patient went much better. Jung always told his students that they must at all times keep watch over themselves, over the way they are reacting to their patient, and to be aware of not projecting their wounds on the wounded patient. Depth psychology is a dangerous profession, since the analyst is forever prone to being infected by the other’s wounds – or having his or her wounds reopened.

Jung viewed psychological conflicts, or emotional wounding not necessarily as a disease, but as an initiation into a process that opens us up to the unconscious. The archetype of the wounded healer is constellated through our wounds. Just as a physical wound needs to be cleaned, bandaged, and given the necessary time to heal – so too do psychological wounds need to be cured by removing negative influences, creating and maintaining an environment in which the healing can take place, and having the necessary patience to allow the natural energy to accomplish the work of growth and healing.

Conclusion

The event of our wounding sends us on a journey in search of ourselves. It is a numinous event. Through our cracks is where the light comes in. Our fragmented self is the doorway into the transpersonal and archetypal realm, the master-pattern and ultimate guide in our lives, to the infinite wisdom of the Self.

It is an archetypal, universal idea that becoming broken, though on one hand seemingly obscuring our wholeness, is actually an expression of it. It is as if some form of destruction is a prerequisite for individuation and is necessary for the birth of the Self.

Suffering is collective, it can be taken as a sign that we are no longer suffering from ourselves, but rather from the spirit of the age. The microcosm and macrocosm are one and the same. Through transforming ourselves, we transform the world; through transforming the world, we transform ourselves. We are interdependent parts of a greater, all-embracing whole and holy being. To realise this is to have an expansion of consciousness.

The archetype of the wounded healer symbolises a type of consciousness that can hold the seemingly mutually exclusive and contradictory opposites of being consciously aware of both our woundedness and our wholeness at one and the same time.

“[T]he greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble… They can never be solved, but only outgrown.”

Carl Jung, Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower

The Psychology of The Wounded Healer

The wounded healer refers to the capacity to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery.

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1825 Behemoth and Leviathan (Book of Job series) – William Blake

Journey to Hell – The Path to Self-Knowledge

Mankind has speculated about the afterlife since the dawn of civilisation. In Duat, the Egyptian underworld, the hearts of the dead were weighed against a feather. The heart was considered as the most important of the internal organs, and the source of human wisdom, which could reveal the person’s true character. If the heart weighed more than the feather, it was immediately consumed and one would remain restless forever in the underworld. If the heart was found lighter or equal in weight, it symbolised that the deceased led a life of virtue and would go on to the Field of Reeds, the Egyptian paradise. Thus, aligning one’s actions to one’s heart was considered as the key to paradise.

For the ancient Greeks, the land of the dead was known as Hades, who was also the Greek god of the underworld. While there was a belief of the existence of the soul after death, it was seen as meaningless. The inhabitants of the underworld have no sense of purpose. Similarly, in the Old Testament, there is no mention of Hell nor Heaven. The dead, whether good or bad, went to the realm of the shades known as Sheol, a place of darkness and eternal sleep. Thus, they lacked a developed conception of the afterlife. It was only later in the New Testament, that Hell was thought of as a place of punishment.

Today, most of us think of Hell as a fiery place containing the souls of the damned who have committed heinous acts in life, and must endure eternal punishment and torture by demons. The Devil reigns over Hell, as the incarnation of the Platonic idea of evil (the perfect form of evil).

Hell is understood as the archetype of ultimate suffering. We often say, “I have been to hell and back” when we experience extreme suffering (whether physical or psychological). Thus, Hell is no imaginary place, but rather a state of consciousness that we all experience at some point in our lives, in different intensities.

Hell, however, is also an unavoidable journey in life. In ancient mysteries or rituals of passages, the hero must descend into a dark place in order to give birth to a new consciousness and gain access to a new stage of life. It is the most profound psychological death and rebirth of the self. We will be exploring the journey into hell as the path to self-knowledge.

“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 9.2: Aion

Table of contents

Hell is Other People

In his play No Exit, French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre depicts a psychological hell, leading to his famous declaration, “Hell is other people.” Rather than being misanthropic, it is a psychological exploration of his idea of the Look. Sartre depicts two women and a man locked in a mysterious room. They are unable to escape the “devouring” gaze of one another. One of the women accuses the man of stealing her face, because she feels automatically judged by his stare. The Look deprives the characters of their individuality, freedom, and responsibility, and locks them into a particular kind of being, as an object in the other people’s views. The experience of always being under the eyes of others causing them to lose their selves and become a collection of mirrors, reflecting what everyone else expects of them. At the end, the man finally realises what hell is:

“All those eyes intent on me. Devouring me. What? Only two of you? I thought there were more; many more. So, this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is other people!”

Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

The Therapist and The Journey into Hell

The Centaur Chirion Instructing Achilles – Louis-Jean Francois Lagrenee

In his book The Cry for Myth, American existential psychologist Rollo May writes a short chapter on The Therapist and The Journey into Hell.

Therapy is the prologue to life rather than life itself. The therapist seeks to help the other person to the point of where he can move forwards in life, solve his problems and overcome the obstacles independently. The task of the therapist is not to cure, but to be a guide, friend, and interpreter to people on their journey through their private hell. Each one of us has or will have private hells crying to be confronted, and we often find ourselves powerless to make progress unaided against these obstacles, which is why the presence of a guide is central and has a powerful effect upon the patient.

We are all in limbo; we are all struggling alone in the human condition. The issue is not to have problems but to fail to be aware of them and fail to confront them.

Human beings can reach heaven only through hell. The journey through hell cannot be omitted. Hell provides a vital wisdom, without suffering, one cannot get to heaven. The agony, the horror, the sadness, are a necessary prelude to self-realisation, and a purity of heart.

Paradise Lost

“No light; but rather darkness visible

Served only to discover sights of woe,

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace

And rest can never dwell, hope never comes

That comes to all, but torture without end

Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed

With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.”

John Milton, Paradise Lost

This is how Hell is portrayed by the English poet John Milton who wrote Paradise Lost entirely through dictation, after having gone blind. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. He describes a rebellion in Heaven prior to the creation of Adam and Eve, and the expulsion of Lucifer and the fallen angels to Hell. Milton paints Lucifer as an ambivalent character, who declares:

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven.”

John Milton, Paradise Lost

Divine Comedy: Introduction

Dante’s epic poem The Divine Comedy was completed in 1320, a year before his death. The main character is Dante himself, who travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. These three stages are simultaneous, and coexisting aspects of all human experience. The work is described as a comedy because it starts up bad and ends up good, as opposed to a tragedy. The book opens with one of the most iconic lines in literature:

“Midway in the journey of our life, I awoke to find myself alone and lost in a dark wood, having wandered from the straight path.”

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

Dante the poet says that it is “journey of our life”. That is to say, it is not just about his journey, but rather about everyone’s story on the path to self-knowledge and spiritual awakening, which begins by descending into Hell. Dante wrote this when he was 35, which was considered as midlife. This book is the ultimate expression of a midlife crisis, a critical phase of existential transformation which the ancient Greeks called metanoia (mental transformation). Dante makes you think seriously about your own life, and to make the best of it when your life is dramatically thrown off course.

This is what Dante faced when he was accused of corruption and to be burned alive at the stake. He remained in perpetual exile from his home in Florence the remaining 20 years of his life. He dropped into the depths of his inner world. From this time comes The Divine Comedy, an example of the interplay between the human and the divine. This is what the Christian existentialist philosopher Paul Tillich calls the method of correlation. The human questions of anxiety, meaninglessness, estrangement, etc., are correlated with religious answers. There is a mutual dependence between theology and existentialism, philosophy, and psychology; which is what allows us to get to the depths of reality.

Dante the pilgrim finds himself within a horrible dark forest, for the straightforward path in life had been lost. He says, “I don’t know how I got here.” Very often, we find ourselves in this situation. There are times when we don’t recognise how we got where we are. We start out with certain goals we want to achieve, but as time passes, we make small choices and without realising it, end up somewhere completely different. As the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard would say, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” This is what Dante experienced, he is not who he set out to be, and he does not know why that is.

Since he does not understand himself nor the purpose of his life, he requires some high ground, some way to orient himself. He sees high above him the sun shining over a hill, but his way is blocked by three beasts, and he is unable to pass through. There’s no shortcut to self-realisation.

In his despair, a figure appears before Dante the pilgrim. It is the ancient Roman poet Virgil. He is a spiritual guide who will be Dante’s companion through the various circles of hell, that are divided according to the nature of the sins committed by those condemned there.

Dante is led to the Gate of Hell. Above it reads: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” He is terrified and is not so sure he wants to enter, he also sees himself unworthy of such a journey. Virgil explains to him that Beatrice is waiting for him in Paradise, the great love of Dante’s life, whom he had fallen in love with when he was nine years old, however, marriage between them was impossible. When Beatrice died at the age of 25, Dante was inconsolable. Her death inspired his early poems, and she appears as a personal myth of Dante’s, a reality in his own mind and heart, a figure that has become eternalised in his works.

Dante agrees to enter the Gate of Hell, and thus begins his extraordinary journey to self-knowledge.

Divine Comedy: Hell

Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth. One might say that it is the journey of climbing down to the depth of the unconscious. It is not just some sadistic observation of the eternal suffering of the damned, but an invitation to recognise one’s own dysfunctions, and see the consequences through myriads of punishments in Hell.

Before descending into the first circle of Hell, Dante and his guide pass through the Vestibule of Hell, where they hear the cries of anguish from the opportunists. These are the souls who were indifferent. They are guilty of the sin of fence-sitting. Since they took no sides, they are given no place.

After this they enter the first circle of Hell known as Limbo, which contains the unbaptised and virtuous pagans who were not sinful but where ignorant of Christ. Many of the great philosophers and poets reside here. In fact, this is also the home of Virgil, before he became Dante’s guide. They are not punished, but spend eternity without being able to see God.

After leaving Limbo, the real suffering begins. The next circles contain lust, gluttony, greed and wrath, symbolising the self-indulgent. It is part of the Upper Hell. As one gets deeper into the circles of Hell, the punishments get more harsh and painful.

Dante makes all kinds of mistakes when he enters Hell. Eventually, he learns that sin is not to be pitied; however, this lesson takes him many circles of Hell to learn. When Dante faints upon witnessing the suffering, he is quickly awakened by Virgil, for it is a journey of vision.

The next circles contain the Lower Hell. Circle 6 is home to the heretics. Here we find the Epicureans who are trapped in tombs burning with fire. The Epicureans believed that the soul died with the body, and stated that pleasure was the chief good in life. The goal is to reach a state of tranquillity, without overindulgence, and minimise suffering – which makes their punishment quite ironic.

The next circles all have more concentric circles within themselves. The seventh circle is home to the violent, including violence to others (murder), violence to oneself (suicide), and violence against nature and God. Dante depicts the worst of the sins in circle 8 and 9, representing fraud and treachery, respectively.

When they finally reach the very centre of Hell, they meet Lucifer, the fallen angel, who is condemned for committing the ultimate sin (personal treachery against God). He is stuck in a frozen lake, and the icy wind that come from the beating of his wings ensures his own imprisonment. Around him, traitors are trapped in various depths according to the severity of their sin.

The devil is three-headed, which is a perversion of the Trinity. He is God’s antithesis. Each head chews eternally on a prominent traitor, on the left and right appear Marcus and Gaius, who were involved in the assassination of Julius Caesar, and on the centre is Judas, the apostle who betrayed Christ.

Virgil and Dante climb down Lucifer’s body. However, Virgil suddenly turns around and begins climbing back up Lucifer’s legs. This scares Dante who believes they are going back to Hell. Virgil reassures him that they are not – things appear to be upside-down because they have passed the opposite side of the world.

This begins the second part of the book: Purgatory, the only land mass in the waters of the Southern Hemisphere, formed by the impact of Lucifer’s fall from Heaven.

Faculty of Knowing and Faculty of Choosing

Illustration to Dante’s Inferno. Plate VI. Start of Canto II – Gustave Doré

Before we begin with Purgatory, there are two important distinctions to be made. Humans have intellect (the faculty of knowing) and will (the faculty of choosing). The problem arises when one lacks knowledge, and thus cannot make the right choices. However, even if one knows the right thing, one doesn’t always make the right choices. Dante the pilgrim echoes this when he writes:

“To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.”

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, quoting Romans 7:18-19

The first step for Dante is to get his faculty of knowing expanded. But, why exactly do people sin? A person might choose to do something bad because he thinks it is good for him. It is often the case that what appears to be good, is in fact bad. There must be a distinction between appearance and reality. If one asks a murderer, “when you were committing your crime, did you know it was bad?” It is likely that he will respond in the affirmative. In other words, the problem isn’t the faculty of knowing, but the faculty of choosing. Dante was influenced by Aristotelian ethics in which the lack of self-mastery is less condemnable than intentional pain and malice. That is why those who abuse the faculty of reason through violence, fraud, and treachery are in the deeper levels of Hell, while the punishment of the self-indulgent is less severe.

Hell is an eternal reminder of what we have done. God doesn’t send us to Hell, we send ourselves to Hell.

“[T]he doors of hell are locked on the inside.”

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

When we refuse the divine love, it lights up fires of suffering within us, that is Hell.

In the Inferno, Dante develops his faculty of knowing, however when he reaches Purgatory, it is not enough. He must learn how to use the intellect as a basis for making good choices. It is a discipline of the will.

Divine Comedy: Purgatory

Purgatorio. Etching. Iconographic Collections

Purgatory is the place of catharsis and cleansing of the soul, where imperfections are burned away. Unlike Hell and Heaven, it is temporary. Every soul in Purgatory will ultimately go to Heaven.

It is depicted as a seven storey mountain associated with the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. In the first and most serious of the seven levels is pride. This is the fundamental human sin. “Eat this,” the serpent says to Eve, “and you will be like God.” It is the desire to be God that lead to the first sin in the Garden of Eden.

While those in Hell are people who tried to justify their sins and are unrepentant, people in Purgatory sinned but prayed for forgiveness before their deaths, and must labour to become free of their sins.

The work in Purgatory is what Dante calls contrapasso, where one is forced to suffer the sin, work through it, and build a virtue. Swiss psychologist Carl Jung calls it enantiodromia, the emergence of the unconscious opposite in one’s psyche. The prideful who elevated themselves are pressed down by great boulders. They carry their oppressive false persona until they can willingly let go of it, when they are able to do so, they stand tall, humbly, and free from what they mistakenly thought to be their true selves. Dante joins the prideful to carry boulders, because he realises that it is also a serious flaw of his own. After seeing all the sins in Hell, one has work of purification to do in Purgatory.

The envious who looked with hatred upon other people and wanted to deprive them of their happiness out of resentment have their eyelids sewn shut. The wrathful walk around in blinding black smoke, which symbolises the blinding effect of anger. The slothful have to run, the greedy lie face-down on the ground and pray, the gluttonous are starved in the presence of trees whose fruit is forever out of reach, and the lustful have to go through a wall of fire as a means of purification.

Purgatory is like our real world, it is a place of transition. Heaven is above us, and hell is below us. We all have inner work to do. We must rather strive to lead as virtuous a life as we can. The goal is not perfection, but wholeness.

Divine Comedy: Heaven

When Dante reaches the top of Mount Purgatory, he’s ready to fly to Heaven, and is joined by Beatrice, who is his new spiritual guide. She leads him on a flight through the various levels of Heaven. When we turn away from our self-centred ego, it is like a weight is off our shoulders, as if we could fly. G.K. Chesterton wrote:

“Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.”

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Dante reaches the Empyrean, the highest point in Heaven. He earns the rare privilege to be in the presence of God while he is still living. He explains that he cannot describe what he saw because language is inadequate to do so. Knowing where intellect cannot take us is important, as well as what our human limitations are. God knows only Himself because God is the entire universe, and everything in the universe is His reflection. Dante understands that he must be able to see himself in God. As soon as he realises this, his vision becomes flooded with a light so bright that he can’t see anything. As Dante wrote, “this is the result of perfect vision.” For the brief period that he is in God’s presence, he is at one with the universe. He has achieved union with God.

Salvation as Individuation

Illustration from the Red Book – Carl Jung

“To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell, is to be banished from humanity.”

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Throughout The Divine Comedy, we see the constant interplay between the positive and the negative, the hopeful and the horrific. Salvation as described by Dante, holds a striking parallel with the process of individuation defined by Carl Jung. The problem of individuation is that the psyche consists of two incongruous halves which should together form a whole. To become individuated is to reconcile the dualities of the inner world and outer world, consciousness and the unconscious, and according to Jung, this is the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence. To reconcile these dualities, the knowledge of symbols (the language of the unconscious) is indispensable, for it is in them that the union of conscious and unconscious is realised, creating our personal myth in life. In the beginning of the poem, Dante the pilgrim has recognised this split in his personality, and that he must embark on a journey to become whole.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Matthew 7:13-14

Marriage of Heaven and Hell

The English poet and visionary artist William Blake wrote a book titled The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Unlike Milton and Dante, Blake describes Hell not as a place of punishment, but as a place of energy. He writes:

“Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human experience. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys reason. Evil is the active springing from energy. Good is heaven. Evil is hell.”

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Blake accepts the terminology of standard Christian morality, but he reverses its values. Conventional Evil belongs to the devils, wrongdoers who suffer in Hell. It is associated with the body, desires, and consists essentially of energy, abundance, actions, and freedom. Conventional Good, which is manifested by angels, who are in Heaven, is associated with the soul (regarded as entirely separate from the body), and consists of reason, restraint, passivity and prohibition. Blake rejects the dualism of body and soul, and both Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell are necessary to life.

He anticipated Freud’s psychoanalysis with the conclusion that Energy or libido (called “evil”) arises from the unconscious (“hell”) and is restricted by Reason (called “good”), the product of the superego (“heaven”).

Blake imagines himself walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius (the devils being the original thinkers and revolutionists), which to the angels (who are conventional and complacent) looks like torment and insanity. Blake states that Hell is full of Energy, and “Energy is Eternal Delight.” Fire is identified with the forces of the unconscious, the flames of inspiration, and possibly as the means of salvation. Blake’s technique of revelation by “the infernal method” of “melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid”, reveals the Proverbs of Hell – which show a wisdom different from the Biblical Book of Proverbs, some of these include:

“The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”

“He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.”

“If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.”

“You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.”

“Excess of sorrow laughs, excess of joy weeps.”

Though Blake was a devout Christian, this work can be seen as a satire, parody, and criticism of orthodox values, as well as the so-called books of wisdom that were often published in condensed forms and consisting of collections of biblical verses to be taught in a rigid manner.

Blake’s proverbs are designed to put the individual’s heart first, rather than laws. They are designed to energise imagination and human emotional response.

“Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.”

“The soul of sweet delight can never be defiled.”

Blake firmly believed that individuals must be able to freely exercise their imagination in order to construct a reality for themselves, this is what he calls the Poetic Genius, if there is one true religion for Blake, it is the divine spark of the imagination.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.”

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Like dreaming or visioning, mythologising is a process that takes our whole being to the borderlands of existence, a place beyond which our eyes can barely make out the vastness of a terra incognita. Yet those who decide to venture that far, receive a gift to take back with them to the inhabited lands we are familiar with. What appears to be a journey of exile into the unknown is, in fact, a journey of returning home to the depth of the soul.

The Red Book: Descent into Hell

“There is only one way and that is your way; there is only one salvation and that is your salvation. Why are you looking around for help? Do you believe that help will come from outside? What is to come will be created in you and from you. Hence look into yourself. Do not compare, do not measure. No other way is like yours. All other ways deceive and tempt you. You must fulfil the way that is in you.”

Carl Jung, The Red Book

Just like Dante had Virgil as a guide, Jung’s personal guide was Philemon, a magician and wise old man that represented superior insight, whose words of wisdom was “full of the sounds of life.” On the other hand, Nietzsche’s guide was the prophet Zarathustra, who grows weary of his wisdom after spending ten years in solitude in the mountains, and speaks thus to the sun:

“I must descend into the depths, as you do in the evening when you go behind the sea and still bring light to the underworld, you overrich star. Like you I must go under – go down, as is said by man, to whom I want to descend… What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

In one of his lectures, Jung stated that:

“A point exists at about the thirty-fifth year when things begin to change, it is the first moment of the shadow side of life, of the going down to death. It is clear that Dante found this point and those who have read Zarathustra will know that Nietzsche also discovered it. When this turning point comes people meet it in several ways: some turn away from it; others plunge into it; and something important happens to yet others from the outside. If we do not see a thing, Fate does it to us”

Carl Jung, ETH lectures (June 14, 1935)

In his late 30s, Jung experienced this midlife existential catastrophe, and was overwhelmed with visions. In his hypnagogic state, he plunged into unknown depths, which he later called his “confrontation with the unconscious”, lasting from 1913 to 1916. Fearing psychosis, Jung kept a loaded revolver in the drawer of his night table, in case the visions became unbearable. In The Red Book, Jung speaks of his descent into Hell, which should not be understood as an afterlife abode of condemnation, but rather as a present living condition of utter bewilderment, encompassing a momentous existential change.

“What do you think of the essence of Hell? Hell is when the depths come to you with all that you no longer are or are not yet capable of. Hell is when you can no longer attain what you could attain. Hell is when you think and feel and do everything that you know you do not want. Hell is when you know that your having to is also a wanting to, and that you yourself are responsible for it. Hell is when you know that everything serious that you have planned with yourself is also laughable, that everything fine is also brutal, that everything good is also bad, that everything high is also low, and that everything pleasant is also shameful.”

Carl Jung, The Red Book

The roots of the tree of life reach into Hell and the top touches Heaven. Through uniting with the self we reach the God, which unites Heaven and Hell in itself. The self functions as a union of opposites, and thus constitutes the most immediate experience of the divine which is at all psychologically comprehensible.

Jung found himself standing on the highest tower of a castle. He sees a figure in the distance, who slowly makes his way to him. He hears footsteps in the stairway, and a strange fear comes over him. It is the devil, or as he calls him, The Red One. Jung has a conversation with him through active imagination.

The Red One: I greet you, man on the high tower. I saw you from afar, looking and waiting. Your waiting has called me.

Jung: Who are you?

The Red One: Who am I? You think I am the devil. Do not pass judgment. Perhaps you can also talk to me without knowing who I am. What sort of a superstitious fellow are you, that immediately you think of the devil?

Jung: If you have no supernatural ability, how could you feel that I stood on my tower, looking out for the unknown and the new? My life in the castle is poor, since I always sit here and no one climbs up to me.

The Red One: So what are you waiting for?

Jung: I await all kinds of things, and especially I’m waiting for some of the world’s wealth, which we don’t see here, to come to me.

The Red One: So, I have come to absolutely the right place. I have wandered a long time through the world, seeking those like you who sit upon a high tower on the lookout for things unseen.

Jung: You make me curious. You seem to be a rare breed. Your appearance is not ordinary, and then too – forgive me – it seems to me that you bring with you a strange air, something worldly, something impudent, or exuberant, or – in fact – something pagan.

Carl Jung, The Red Book

As Jung continues his conversation, The Red One is amused by his ponderous speech and seriousness. He tells Jung that life doesn’t require any seriousness. On the contrary, it’s better to dance through life. Jung tells him that he knows how to dance, and the devil is surprised, for he considers dancing to be of his own province. Thus, they reach common ground. The peculiarity of the devil is that he fails to take seriously anything that only concerns others. The devil is convinced that dancing is neither lust nor madness, but an expression of joy. In this, Jung agreed with the devil, echoing what Nietzsche wrote:

“You Higher Men, the worst thing about you is: none of you has learned to dance as a man ought to dance – to dance beyond yourselves.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Jung ends his conversation with The Red One as follows:

Jung: Perhaps too there is a joy before God that one can call dancing. But I haven’t found this joy. I look out for things that are yet to come. Things came, but joy was not among them.

The Red One: Don’t you recognise me, brother, I am joy!

Jung: Could you be joy? I see you as through a cloud. Your image fades. Let me take your hand, beloved, who are you, who are you? Joy? Was he joy?

Carl Jung, The Red Book

Jung earnestly confronted his devil and behaved with him as with a real person. He learned to take seriously every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits his inner world. He was his joy, the joy of the serious person. Whoever tastes this joy forgets himself. And there is nothing sweeter than forgetting oneself.

Jung writes:

“If you ever have the rare opportunity to speak with the devil, then do not forget to confront him in all seriousness. He is your devil after all. The devil as the adversary is your own other standpoint; he tempts you and sets a stone in your path where you least want it. Taking the devil seriously does not mean going over to his side, or else one becomes the devil. Rather it means coming to an understanding. Thereby you accept your other standpoint. With that the devil fundamentally loses ground, and so do you. And that may be well and good.”

Carl Jung, The Red Book

When Jung realised that the devil is joy, he wanted to make a pact with him. But, he couldn’t make a pact with joy, because it immediately disappears. The essence of the devil is that he cannot be captured. The devil seeks to saw off the branch on which you sit. That is useful and protects one from falling asleep and from the vices that go along with it.

“The devil is an evil element. But joy? If you run after it, you see that joy also has evil in it, since then you arrive at pleasure and from pleasure go straight to Hell, your own particular Hell, which turns out differently for everyone.”

Carl Jung, The Red Book

Unlike Faust, who in his depression and dissatisfaction with life sold his soul to the devil, in exchange for power, knowledge, and material gain – Jung avoids this danger by reaching a mutual agreement. He achieved some joy, and the devil accepted some of Jung’s seriousness. It is always a risky thing to accept joy, it cannot be pursued; it must ensue.

What Jung initially perceived as a deeply critical period leading him to the brink of madness eventually came to represent the source of the most creative and significant period of his life, “the stuff and material for more than one life”, as he put it.

For Jung, purifying one’s vision while travelling through Hell involves, first and foremost, the acknowledgment and integration of an evil counterpart through what he calls the shadow. However, while it is within the bounds of possibility for us to recognise the relative evil of our nature, it is a rare and shattering experience to gaze into the face of absolute evil.

“Whoever fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become one himself. And when you stare for a long time into an abyss, the abyss stares back into you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Conclusion

Emblem 9 from Philosophia Reformata – Johann Daniel Mylius

The descent into hell is a cathartic journey which leads to self-knowledge, self-transformation, and ultimately, self-transcendence. It is easy to get into but very difficult to exit. It epitomises a process of self-transformation similar to what the alchemists intended with the nigredo phase of spiritual mortification and putrefaction, a dangerous, yet healing, descent into one’s inner underworld. Only in the region of danger can one find the treasure hard to attain.

Everything in the human mind belongs to the natural play of opposites, which regulates life. Real self-transformation shall never be complete without man’s reconciliation of heaven and hell.

“He who journeys to Hell also becomes Hell; therefore do not forget from whence you come. The depths are stronger than us; so do not be heroes, be clever and drop the heroics, since nothing is more dangerous than to play the hero.”

Carl Jung, The Red Book

Journey to Hell – The Path to Self-Knowledge

Hell is understood as the archetype of ultimate suffering. It is no imaginary place, but rather a state of consciousness that we all experience at some point in our lives.

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Artwork used in the video

A section of the Book of the Dead showing the Weighing of the Heart in the Duat using the feather of Maat as the measure in balance

Why Modern Society Feels So Empty, Lonely, and Anxious

Loneliness, emptiness, and anxiety – these are the main complaints American existential psychologist Rollo May encountered over and over from his patients. In 1953, May published Man’s Search for Himself, in which he explores these problems – that are perhaps more relevant than ever in our modern age.

When society can no longer give us a clear picture of our values and standards, of what we are and what we ought to be, we are then thrown back on the search for ourselves. This is one of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety. To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose oneself.

“[T]o venture in the highest sense is precisely to become conscious of oneself.”

Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death

Table of contents

Emptiness

Evening on Karl Johan Street – Edvard Munch

May observed that many people feel a sense of emptiness in their lives. They have no definite experience of their own desires or wants, and have painful feelings of powerlessness. People may well know what they should do – to study, get a job, fall in love, marry and raise a family – but it is soon evident, even to them, that they are describing what others expect of them, rather what they themselves want. As one person put it, “I’m just a collection of mirrors, reflecting what everyone else expects of me.”

The poet T.S. Eliot’s prophetic words describes the spirit of the age:

“We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion.”

T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems: The Hollow Men

Some may say that this feeling of emptiness represents living in a time of uncertainty and turmoil. So, how can one attain inner integration in a disintegrated world? May believes that the question of which age we live in is irrelevant. This is a perennial problem, and no society can perform for the individual or relieve him from his task of self-realisation, and from the obstacles that are in his way, and no traumatic world situation can rob the individual of the privilege of making the final decision with regard to himself. Each person must come to his own consciousness of himself, and he does this on a level which transcends the particular age he lives in.

It is not unusual to blame the times we live in for our problems, instead of inquiring whether something may not well be severely out of joint within ourselves. To be mentally sound, man must constantly be struggling and striving for a worthwhile goal.

It is often the case that those that feel empty and hollow are the more sensitive and gifted members of society, in contrast to the “well-adjusted” citizen who is able for the time being to cover up his underlying conflicts. There is a sense of accomplishment that comes with fulfilling external goals. However, as one continues to progress externally, there comes a time where one suddenly hits a wall. This is where there most important task of one’s life begins, namely, the search for oneself.

The clearest picture of the empty life is the modern man who moves through a routine, mechanical existence year after year, almost as if he didn’t really live his life, but rather is dragged by it.

It is a curious commentary on people’s fear of time that if much time passes without their being aware of it, they assume they had a “good time”. A good time is thus defined as escaping boredom. It is as though the goal were to be as little alive as possible, as though life is an unprofitable episode that disturbs an otherwise blessed state of non-existence. When we are bored we tend to go to sleep – that is, to blot out consciousness, and become as nearly “extinct” as possible.

The monotonous path of the hollow man is easily followed most of the time, however, one day, the ‘why’ arises. The human being cannot live in a condition of emptiness for very long: if he is not growing toward something, he does not merely stagnate; the repressed emotions turn into morbidity and despair, and eventually into destructive activities. In Jungian terms, it feeds the shadow, the unconscious dark side of one’s personality – until it becomes big enough to take control over one’s life, as an autonomous entity.

The experience of emptiness comes from our feeling that we are powerless to do anything effective about our lives or the world we live in. In such a case, one soon gives up wanting and feeling and becomes apathetic, as a self-defence mechanism. When a person continually faces dangers he is powerless to overcome, his final line of defence is at last to avoid even feeling the dangers.

Loneliness

Emptiness goes together with loneliness. May writes:

“Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don’t find themselves at all.”

Rollo May, Man’s Search for Himself

When someone, for instance, breaks off a relationship, they will often say that they feel “emptied”. The loss of the other leaves an inner yawning void, causing alienation.

When a person does not know with any inner conviction what he wants or what he feels, he becomes aware of the fact that the conventional desires and goals he has been taught to follow no longer bring him any security or give him any sense of direction.

The feeling of loneliness arises from the great emphasis on being socially accepted. We always have to prove we are a “social success”, and people do their best to be well-liked. And if a person is alone very much of the time, people tend to think that there’s something wrong with him, for it is inconceivable to them that he would choose to be alone.

Silence is lonely and frightening. The spectre of loneliness hovers outside like the fog drifting in from the sea. Death is the symbol of ultimate separation, aloneness, and isolation from other human beings. Pascal wrote that:

“I have often concluded that all men’s unhappiness comes from a single fact, namely that men can’t stay quietly in one room.”

Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Man needs relations with other people in order to orient himself. When he is alone, he is afraid that he will lose his experience of being a self, because he is constituted by a collection of mirrors representing the expectations of other people.

We replace our deep emotional experiences with superficial talk, and we tend, thus, to become emptier and lonelier. If people contemplate being alone for a long period of time, without anyone to talk to or any device to eject noise into the air, people are generally afraid that they would be at “loose ends”, would lose the boundaries for themselves, would have nothing by which to orient themselves. In other words, people are afraid that if they lose their dependence on others, they would lose the sense of their own existence. In its extreme form, it is the fear of psychosis.

While loneliness is destructive, solitude is constructive. It is only by balancing social life with temporary solitude that one is thrown back to the search of oneself, and this is what many have neglected to develop.

Social acceptance and being liked has so much power because it holds the feelings of loneliness at bay. A person is surrounded with comfortable warmth; he is merged in the group. He is reabsorbed, as though in the extreme psychoanalytic symbol, he were to go back into the womb. We are wired to belong to a group where we feel valued by our contributions to it. The person temporarily loses his loneliness, but it is at the price of giving up his own existence as an individual, renouncing the one thing which would get him constructively over the loneliness in the long run, namely, the developing of his own inner self, and using this as a basis for meaningful relations with others. Thus one can be surrounded by a group of people and yet feel completely alone, because one is alienated from oneself. Such a person indulges in short-term comfort, for long-term discomfort. Feasting is prior to, the more fundamental fasting.

Anxiety

Self Portrait in Mirror – Léon Spilliaert

Emptiness and loneliness are two phases of the same experience of anxiety.When a nation is prey to economic poverty and is psychologically and spiritually empty, totalitarianism comes in to fill the vacuum, and people run to sell their freedom in order to get rid of the anxiety which is too great for them to bear any longer.

May gives us two types of anxiety: normal anxiety, and neurotic anxiety. To explain the first type, he gives us the following example:

“If you are walking across a highway and see a car speeding toward you, your heart beats faster, you focus your eyes on the distance between the car and you, and how far you have to go to get to the safe side of the road, and you hurry across. You felt fear, and it energised you to rush to safety. But if, when you start to hurry across the road, you are surprised by cars coming down the far lane from the opposite direction, you suddenly are caught in the middle of the road not knowing which way to turn. Your heart pounds faster, but now, in contrast to the experience of fear above, you feel panicky, and your vision may be suddenly blurred. You have an impulse—which, let us hopefully assume, you control—to run blindly in any direction. After the cars have sped by, you may be aware of a slight faintness and a feeling of hollowness in the pit of the stomach. This is anxiety.”

Rollo May, Man’s Search for Himself

Normal anxiety is a basic confusion and bewilderment about where one is going. In fear we know what threatens us and our perceptions become sharper to overcome the danger. In anxiety, however, we are threatened without knowing what steps to take to meet the danger. And instead of becoming sharper, our perceptions generally become blurred or vague.

Anxiety may occur in slight or great intensity. People have been known to leap out of a lifeboat and drown rather than face the greater agony of continual doubt and uncertainty, never knowing whether they will be rescued or not. A person experiencing anxiety is like a pilot in the transatlantic flight who has passed the point of no return, who does not have fuel enough to go back, but must push on regardless of storms or other dangers.

Anxiety is the human being’s basic reaction to a danger to his existence, or to some value he identifies with his existence. It strikes us at the very core of our selves.May tells us that in its full-blown intensity, anxiety is the most painful emotion to which the human animal is heir, the threat of death being the most common symbol for anxiety. However, most of us in our civilised era aren’t constantly threatened with death. The great bulk of our anxietycomes when some value we hold essential to our existence as selves is threatened. Since the dominant values for most people in our society are being liked, accepted, and approved of, much anxiety in our day comes from the threat of not being liked, being lonely, or ostracised.

Every human being experiences normal anxiety in many different ways as he develops and confronts the trials and tribulations of life. However, while normal anxiety is proportionate to the real threat of the danger situation, neurotic anxiety, on the other hand, is disproportionate to the real danger. The person feels threatened, but it is as though by a ghost. In this state, people often remark that they feel as though as they were in a daze. Anxiety tends to destroy our consciousness of ourselves. It disorients us, wipes out temporarily our clear knowledge of what and who we are, and blurs our view of reality around us. This bewilderment—as to who we are and what we should do—is the most painful thing about anxiety.

Authoritarianism (the neurotic form of authority) becomes increasingly explicit, not particularly because so many people believe in it, but because they feel themselves individually powerless and anxious. The loss of the centre of values goes hand in hand with the rise of collectivist movements. We need to oppose totalitarianism and other tendencies toward dehumanisation on one hand, and to recover our experience of selfhood on the other.

Anxiety, like fever, is a sign that an inner struggle is in progress. It is evident that a psychological or spiritual battle is going on. As the fever is a symptom of the battle between the bodily powers and the infecting germs, so anxiety is evidence of a battle between our strength of selfhood. Just as anxiety destroys our self-awareness, so awareness of ourselves can destroy anxiety.

Self-awareness is bound to progress through a state of sickness. The only way out of escaping anxiety, therefore, seems to be to go through with it.

Our task, then, is to strengthen our consciousness of ourselves, to find centres of strength within ourselves which will enable us to stand despite the confusion and bewilderment around us.

Rediscovering Selfhood

Before rediscovering selfhood, we should first start by asking: what is this sense of selfhood we seek?

As the foetus in the womb, the infant has been part of the “original we” with its mother, and continues as part of the psychological “we” in early infancy. Between the ages of one and three, however, there appears in the human being the most radical and important emergence so far in evolution, namely, consciousness of himself. With the ego, the child begins to see himself as an “I”, and becomes aware of his freedom within the context of the relationship with his parents. However, he may feel terribly powerless in comparison with the great and strong adults around him, and fear living without the protection of his parents.

As the child grows up, the ego – his sense of identity – enables him to imagine himself in someone else’s place, and ask how he would feel and what he would do if he were this other person. These capacities are the rudiments of our ability to love our neighbour, to have ethical sensitivity, to devote ourselves to ideals, and to die for them if need be. To fulfil these potentialities is to gain a sense of selfhood. We are also beings able to stand outside the present, learn from the past and plan for the future. Man’s consciousness of himself is the source of his highest qualities. But these gifts come only at a high price, the price of anxiety and inward crises. The human being must build and develop a healthy ethical awareness in order to increase his sense of personal worth, responsibility, and freedom.

The biblical story of Adam and Eve pictures how ethical insight and self-awareness are born at the same time. This creation myth speaks a classic truth to generation after generation of people not because it refers to a particular historical event, but because it portrays some deep inward experience shared by everyone.

When Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden, they had no anxiety and no guilt: they did not know they were naked. In this state they had no struggles with living, no psychological conflict within themselves, and no spiritual conflict with God. But when Eve is tempted by a serpent to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree and gives some to Adam, they were at once aware of their nakedness, and experienced anxiety and guilt. This story is a way of describing what happens in every human being’s development: the emergence of self-awareness in infancy. Before that time, the individual lived in the Garden of Eden, a symbol of the period of existence in the archetypal womb – he lived in original wholeness. However, anxiety and guilt feelings are not too great a price to pay for the venture of self-knowledge, and the task of becoming who one truly is. It is a fall “upward”.

Two twin girls gave a vivid illustration of how important it is for someone to have a sense of selfhood. Their parents dressed them alike, but one of them would always want to wear a different kind of dress from her sister, she would even, if necessary, wear an older and less pretty dress. The girl expressed her desire to be seen as a different person. It cannot be explained by saying the child wanted attention; for she would have gotten more attention if she had dressed as a twin. It shows, rather, her demand to be a person in her own right, to have personal identity – a need which was more important to her even than attention or prestige.

This is the goal of every human being – to have a sense of identity. Every organism has one and only one central need in life, to fulfil its own potentialities. But the human being’s task in fulfilling his nature is more difficult, for he must do it in self-consciousness.

Conflicts of childhood come from adults who are struggling to overcome what in their past lives originally blocked them in their development. Almost every adult is, in greater or lesser degree, still struggling on the long journey to achieve selfhood on the basis of the patterns which were set in his early experiences in the family.

For instance, May tells the case of a young man who got no real enjoyment from human companionship, and even though he was intellectually competent and successful, he had feelings of anxiety and recurrent depressions. It was his habit to always stand outside of himself, looking at himself, being concerned with how well he was doing something. In other words, he was an observer of himself, and to treat oneself as an object is to be a stranger to oneself. His parents had been overprotective of him, they would brag about his achievements in school to relatives, and take pride in his brightness. But, they rarely expressed real appreciation directly to him. Thus, he was unable to develop a feeling of his own worth.

When a baby is born, he becomes a physical individual when the umbilical cord is severed at his birth, but unless the psychological umbilical cord is also in due time cut as one grows up, one remains like a toddler tied to a stake in his parents’ front yard. One can go no further than the length of one’s rope. This blocks development, and the surrendered freedom for growth turns inward and festers in resentment and anger. These are the people who, though they may seem to get along tolerably well within the range of the toddler’s rope, are greatly upset when they have to take responsibility and venture into unknown territory. No wonder many people repress unconscious conflicts and try all their lives to run from the anxiety, they symbolically desire to return to the womb.

No one moves on into responsible selfhood if he remains chiefly the reflection of the social context around him. Conformity is the great destroyer of selfhood, where being well-liked is seen as the ticket to salvation. May writes:

“The opposite to courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.”

Rollo May, Man’s Search for Himself

We are created by each other, but we also possess our capacity to experience, and create ourselves. To the extent that we do fulfil our potentialities as persons, we experience the profoundest joy to which the human being is heir. Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. This is the inner sanctum where each person must stand alone.

To begin the journey of self-realisation, one must rediscover one’s feelings, wants, and relation to the unconscious aspects of oneself.

Many people only have a general acquaintance with what they feel – they do not feel directly, but only give ideas about their feelings. What is important is to ask oneself how one feels in an honest manner. The experience that it is “I”, who is actively feeling with a heightened aliveness.

The body is the first core of our personal identity which we develop and explore as infants. But many of us neglect our bodies, until we fall ill, as if the body is telling us, “when will you listen to me?” May proposes that illnesses be not taken as periodic accidents which occur to our body, but as nature’s means of re-educating the person.

Awareness of one’s feelings and developing a healthy relationship to our body lays the groundwork for the next step: knowing what one wants. Children are quite clear in expressing their needs, but as we grow older – we becomes less and less clear. The amazing thing is how few people know what they want. They only know what they should want and what people expect of them.

However, we shouldn’t worry too much when we don’t know what we want, because our unconscious knows. It is up to us to listen to it or to ignore it. All through the ages, people have regarded their dreams as sources of wisdom, guidance, and insight. It is a significant portion of the self, when we are cut off from the unconscious, it puts us in the position of trying to drive a chariot with four or five horses pulling off in different directions. Even the unskilled person, if he takes the attitude that what his dreams tell him is not simply to be rejected as silly, may get occasional useful guidance from his dreams – providing insights and solutions to his problems that he is unconscious of. Instead of asking what the unconscious requires of us, we should rather ask what it can teach us about human life, in our particular time and with our problems.

May intends to show us that the more self-awareness a person has, the more alive he is. A heightened awareness saves us from two errors. The first is passivism – not being concerned with self-awareness and letting the deterministic forces take control of one’s life, which leads to psychological projection and neurosis. Fate leads the willing, and drags along the unwilling. It is us, with the help of the ego, that must make the unconscious conscious. The other error is activism, that is, using activity as a substitute for self-awareness. Many people keep busy all the time as a way of covering up anxiety; their activism is a way of running from themselves. They get a pseudo and temporary sense of aliveness by being in a hurry. Aliveness often means the capacity not to act, to be creatively idle – which may be more difficult for most modern people than to do something. To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity. It brings new appreciation for being something rather than merely doing something.

A strong sense of selfhood must not be confused with self-inflation, which is a sign of inner emptiness; a show of pride is one of the most common covers for anxiety. Similarly, self-condemnation provides a substitute for self-worth which helps to drown the bitter ache of worthlessness. It prevents one from an open and honest confrontation of one’s problems, and makes for a pseudo-humility rather than the honest humility of one who seeks to face his situation realistically. It is as though the person were saying to himself, “I must be important that I am so worth condemning.” Thus, much self-condemnation is a cloak for pride.

In ancient Athens when a politician was trying to get the votes of the working class by appearing very humble in a tattered coat with big holes in it, Socrates unmasked his hypocrisy by exclaiming, “Your vanity shows forth from every hole in your coat.”

Freedom

Self-awareness leads to freedom. May writes:

“Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mould ourselves.”

Rollo May, Man’s Search for Himself

The less self-awareness a person has, the more he is unfree. When people come for psychotherapeutic help, they generally complain that they are “driven” in any number of ways: they have sudden anxieties or are blocked in studying or working without any appropriate reason. They are unfree, bound and pushed by unconscious patterns. They are totally detached from themselves.

However, freedom leads to anxiety. Dostoevsky portrays this in his novel The Brothers Karamazov. Christ comes back to earth and is taken to prison by the Grand Inquisitor. He tells Christ that his mistake was that in place of rigid laws, he placed on man the burden of having with free heart to decide for himself what is good and what is evil, and this fearful burden of free choice is too much for men. People want to be treated as children and be led by authority. Therefore, the church places restrictions to save people from the great anxiety and terrible agony of making a free decision for themselves. It saves them from, the dizziness of freedom, as Kierkegaard puts it.

Psychologically, within the person there is a fear of moving ahead. There is the courageous side of man, and the servile side which prefers comfort to freedom, security to one’s own growth. Morbid dependency is not simply failure to grow up: it is a dynamic pattern which represents a flight from anxiety. A form of parasitism in which one organism is unable to live except as it clings to another.

An unfree person eventually becomes hateful and resentful. As if someone would say, “You have conquered me, but I reserve the right to hate you.” The person has kept in his hatred an inner citadel, a last vestige of dignity and pride – even though outwardly conditions deny him the essential rights of the human being. This is also seen in the fact that totalitarian governments must provide for their people some object for the hatred which is generated by the government’s having taken away their freedom – otherwise people would revolt.

One is typically taught not to admit one’s hatred – and as a consequence it is repressed. Perhaps the reason that resentment continues to be such a common, chronic and corrosive emotion in our age is that hatred has been so generally repressed. In therapy, if a person is unable to admit or bring out the source of his hatred and resentment, prognosis is less good. Hatred and resentment temporarily preserve the person’s inner freedom, but sooner or later one must transform destructive emotions into constructive ones.

Freedom is not rebellion. To rebel is to give a delusive sense of being really independent. Since the rebel gets his sense of direction and vitality from attacking others, he does not have to develop standards of his own. Rebellion acts as a substitute for the more difficult process of struggling through one’s own autonomy, to the state where one can lay new foundations on which to build. Freedom is never the opposite to responsibility.

This doesn’t mean that we aren’t all determined by the fact that we are thrown into the world into a particular family, country, economic situation, sex, and time and place in history. In fact, there are many ways in which we are psychologically determined, particularly by unconscious tendencies. We are a dynamic project that has to be completed in view of the world, and to the extent that we deal with it, we make it ours. This can be done by taking responsibility for who we are at our core and by the circumstance in which we were born into, acknowledging our limitations and the freedom we have as individuals who are always projecting towards a goal. This attitude of aliveness is important to fulfil one’s destiny. The person who is devoted to freedom does not waste time fighting reality, instead he extols reality.

Courage

Prometheus Brings Fire – Heinrich Friedrich Füger

In an age of anxiety, herd mentality and personal isolation, courage is a sine qua non. Courage is the capacity to meet the anxiety which arises as one achieves freedom. At every step in one’s life, one moves from the familiar into the unfamiliar. Courage is nothing but an affirmative answer to the shocks of existence. People lack courage because of their fear of being subjected to social isolation, that is, being laughed at, or rejected. If one sinks back into the crowd, he does not risk these dangers.

From the ancient story of Prometheus, who was punished by the Gods for bringing fire to humanity, it has been recognised that to create requires courage. Every act of genuine creativity means achieving a higher level of self-awareness and personal freedom, which involves considerable inner conflict.

Courage is required not only in a person’s occasional crucial decision for his own freedom, but in the little hour-to-hour decisions which place the bricks in the structure of his building of himself into a responsible and free person.

Death

Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion – John Martin

A person who becomes very sick can either give up, rebel, or see it as an avenue for self-knowledge. It is often the case that in confronting one’s mortality, people suddenly realise what is truly important in their lives. Death shatters all our superficial concerns, and throws us back to the search for ourselves, to our purpose and meaning in life. Many times, those who survive are enriched and strengthened by the experience – and some may even be thankful. We are all sleepwalkers in life until some inexplicable or life-threatening experience, which can activate our thinking about death, awakens us from our deep slumber.

“Up from the ground sprang I

And hailed the earth with such a cry

As is not heard save from a man

Who has been dead, and lives again.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Renascence

In extreme cases such as being condemned to death, one can still in his freedom choose how one will relate to these facts – such as Socrates’ decision to drink the hemlock rather than compromise and preserve his life. To die for one’s freedom (quite contrary to any simple doctrine of self-preservation) implies some profound things about human nature and human existence.

Dying makes more crucial for us the fact that while we are not dead at the moment, we some time will be: so why not choose something at least interesting in the meantime?

“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.”

Ecclesiastes 9:10

The psychological death of one’s old self is followed by a heightened awareness of life, with new insights. The responsibility for one’s life takes on a whole new meaning. The person accepts life not as a burden placed upon him, but as something he has chosen himself. For this person now exists as a result of a decision he himself has made. The other thing which happens is that one accepts discipline not because it is commanded, but because one has chosen with greater freedom what one wants to do with one’s life, and discipline is necessary for the sake of the values one wishes to achieve.

Unless the individual’s own inner motives are made the starting place, no discussion of values will make much real difference. As Nietzsche put it, “man is the great valuator”, and only as he himself actively chooses and affirms his values, can or will he take responsibility for his actions.

When one has become convinced of his beliefs “on his own pulse” and in his own experience, rather than through abstract principles or through being told, one gains confidence in what one says. Out of the heart are the issues of life. The wholeness of the man whose external actions are at one with his inner motives is one who is pure in heart. No one has known God who has not known himself – fly to the soul, the secret place of the Most High.

“It is doubtful whether anyone really begins to live, that is, to affirm and choose his own existence, until he has frankly confronted the terrifying fact the he could wipe out his existence but chooses not to. Since one is free to die, he is free also to live.”

Rollo May, Man’s Search for Himself

Loneliness, Emptiness, Anxiety in Modern Society

Loneliness, emptiness, and anxiety – these are the main complaints American existential psychologist Rollo May encountered over and over from his patients.

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The Psychology of The Man-Child (Puer Aeternus)

The term puer aeternus is Latin for eternal boy. It is mentioned for the first time in the Metamorphoses, written by the Roman poet Ovid. The child god Iacchus is praised in his role in the Eleusinian mysteries, initiations related to Greek goddesses, and the most famous of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece. In later times, the child-god was identified with Bacchus, another name for Dionysus, and the god Eros. He is a god of life, death, and resurrection, the god of divine youth.

Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Jung rescued the mythological term of puer aeternus and used it in the exploration of the psychology of eternal youth and creative child within every person. When the subject is a female the Latin term is puella aeterna.

It is an archetype (a primordial structural element of the psyche), and like all archetypes, has both a positive and a negative side. It can bring the energy, beauty and creativity of childhood into adult life, or thwart self-realisation and doom us to both unrealistic adolescent fantasies and experiencing life as a prison.

The eternal youth archetype is the first one we experience in life, and remains vital throughout our whole life. It is closely related to the mother archetype.

A puer or puella avoids individuation, and fights against his or her inner drive towards psychological wholeness. This stunts growth. While they have a great imagination, and rich inner life, they do not bring it into consciousness and thus do not progress in life, the potential remains hidden and unused, stored away in the depths of the unconscious.

In The Matrix, the main character Neo is offered the choice between a red pill and a blue pill. The blue pill allows him to remain content and comfortable in a simulated reality, it is the idea that ignorance is bliss. The red pill, on the other hand, allows him to confront the harsh truth of reality and to embark on the quest of self-realisation. The puer will often choose the blue pill.

Those who find themselves unable to commit to work, to form satisfactory relationships, to commit to the discipline of education, to carry the weight of responsibility, or who feel that their life has become meaningless, will find the integration of the archetype of eternal youth invaluable in their life.

Table of contents

Adult Struggle with the Paradise of Childhood

In her book, Puer Aeternus: A Psychological Study of the Adult Struggle with the Paradise of Childhood, Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz gives us an in-depth exploration of the puer aeternus.

The negative aspects of the puer aeternus is used to refer to a certain young man who remains too long in adolescence, and usually coupled with too great a dependence on the mother. The natural response of a mother is to protect her child, however, when the child is kept in the comfort of the nest for too long, he is unable to face the trials and tribulations of life when he grows up. He, therefore, flees from the cold cruel world and seeks his childhood under the nourishing and protecting circle of the mother, it is the unconscious temptation to return to the womb. This creates a mother complex.

The puer is the man-child who refuses to grow up, take responsibility, and face life’s challenges, he expects other people, typically his parents, to solve all his problems. Since he lacks zest for learning, he never develops a proper understanding of anything. von Franz writes:

“Such people usually have great difficulty in finding a job, for whatever they find is never quite right or quite what they wanted. There is always “a hair in the soup.” The woman is never quite the right woman; she is nice as a girlfriend, but… There is always a “but” which prevents marriage or any kind of commitment.”

Marie-Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus

The puer is aware of the transitoriness of life, so he does not give himself wholeheartedly to any experience. He knows that the end will be a disappointment and a parting. The puer is always getting ready to say goodbye, which makes it more likely for the experience to end, thus erroneously reinforcing his beliefs even more.

It is a typical pathological reaction of the puer to train himself not to suffer by anticipating suffering, he anticipates the disappointment in order not to suffer the blow, and that is a refusal to live. It seems to him the rational thing to do, but thinking too much is a disease. He gets stuck in his own reflective hyperconsciousness, a self-created bubble which isolates him from life.

“One of the problems is that if the puer enters life, then he must face the fact that he is entering upon his own mortality and the corruptible world; he must realise his own death. That is a variation of the old mythological motif where after leaving Paradise, which is a kind of archetypal maternal womb, man falls into the realisation of his incompleteness, his corruptibility, and his mortality.”

Marie-Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus

The puer is usually in a sleepy daze, so that sometimes one feels inclined to pour a bucket of cold water over his head. However, this is only an outer aspect, if one looks deeper, one will find that he has a cherished fantasy life within. The puer may become a megalomaniac and think of himself as someone special and exceptional, a hidden genius, or the next big philosopher – but, he has no tangible product to show his genius. He is an artist without art. The puer daydreams and engages in passive fantasy, which is very different from Jung’s technique of active imagination. Daydreaming about success, instead of visualising failure, can make one more prone to failure.

Jung writes:

“The puer typically leads a provisional life, due to the fear of being caught in a situation from which it might not be possible to escape… Plans for the future slip away in fantasies of what will be, what could be, while no decisive action is taken to change. He covets independence and freedom, chafes at boundaries and limits, and tends to find any restriction intolerable.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 9.2: Aion

The provisional life is a term used to describe an attitude toward life that is more or less imaginary, not rooted in the here and now. The person harbours a strange attitude and feeling that his job, house, car, creative endeavour, or relationship is not yet what is really wanted, they are but mere placeholders until the ‘real thing’ arrives someday.

Jung described it as:

“[T]he modern European disease of the merely imaginary life.”

Carl Jung’s Letter to Count Hermann Keyserling (30 August 1931)

The puer eschews commitment and responsibility, because it requires a rigid lifestyle. He escapes into the world of fantasy to find temporary comfort. The puer tries to go as high as possible away from reality, ending up like Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn’t grow up, who lives in Neverland, a place where people cease to age and are eternally young. The puer aeternus is also known as the Peter Pan syndrome. This has become an increasingly common problem in our modern age.

Such a person is missing a sense of identity which results in disquieting feelings of fragmentation and worthlessness. The puer compensates in his behaviour by pursuing the ecstatic “high” in drugs, alcohol, sex, sport, and daredevil escapade, that transcends the inner depression which threatens fragmentation, granting an illusion of selfhood, which underlies his restless search for that state of stability and harmony.

The person living provisionally is alienated from his own reality, spending his time ruminating on fantasies that go nowhere, and that achieve nothing.

In the ancient Greek fable, “The Astrologer who Fell into a Well”, Thales of Miletus, considered as the first philosopher, is said to have been so lost in thought that while gazing at the stars, he fell into a well. How should one have knowledge of the heavenly things above, if one knows not what is beneath one’s feet?

While the puer has a vivid imagination, he is not capable of transforming these insights into action, because he lives in an ethereal realm and misses the blood and guts of life on earth. As a result, the puer is not very successful in life.

von Franz writes:

“In actuality, for instance, he gets up at 10:30 a.m., hangs around till lunch time with a cigarette in his mouth, giving way to his emotions and fantasies. In the afternoon he means to do some work but first he goes out with friends and then with a girl, and the evening is spent in long discussion about the meaning of life. He then goes to bed at one, and the next day is a repetition of the one before. In that way, the capacity for life and the inner riches are wasted, for they cannot get into something meaningful but slowly overgrow the real personality. The individual walks about in a cloud of fantasies, fantasies which in themselves are interesting and full of rich possibilities, full of unlived life. You feel that such a person has a tremendous wealth and capacity but there is no possibility of finding a means of realisation.”

Marie-Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus

The puer usually has a great capacity to assimilate the contents and to listen, so that it seems that he is going to implement them. But, he never applies the concepts he has learned, for he is not grounded enough in reality. It is a trick which the puer performs: the realisation that they should adapt to reality is an intellectual idea to them which they fulfil in fantasy but not in reality. Though it might seem simple, the puer is unable to cross the border from fantasy to action.

The word human derives from the Latin word humus, which means earth. To be human is to be humble, down-to-earth, and grounded in earthly experience, which contains a rich source of nutrients that heals us.

The puer is like Icarus, who in Greek mythology is warned about hubris and not to fly too close to the sun. However, he ignores this instruction and flies so close to the sun that his wings melt. He falls from the sky, plunges into the sea, and drowns.

Jung writes:

“The provisional life; where one does not exist really, they are only a spectator; so any experience is ghost-like, perfectly abstract, without a trace of realisation.”

Carl Jung, The Visions Seminar

Jung tells the story of a 25 year old girl who had an extreme case of provisional life, which led to her suicide. She proved to be absolutely inaccessible. She lived things, she did things, but she did not know what she was living. No matter how hard Jung tried, nothing touched her, because she had no relation to the world at all. A few months later, she shot herself. Jung writes:

“I saw the corpse. She had shot herself through the heart in the street and had not lost consciousness for a minute or two. The expression on her face was completely altered. For a long time I stood watching her face and asking myself: “What kind of expression is that?” It was the most extraordinary, the expression of someone who was convinced, say, that a thing was black, and to whom it was very important that it was black, but to whom one had finally proven that it was red; and it was as if she suddenly realised it was red. It was a look full of bewilderment and a sort of pleasant surprise. I saw what happened: at the moment when she shot herself… she understood what life was for the first time.”

Carl Jung, The Visions Seminar

Sometimes people have to injure themselves very badly in order to awaken to what life really is. This shows how deeply unconscious people often are.

The inner world must complement the outer world, and vice versa. An over-reliance on the inner world in which the ego cannot get out of Neverland, will make it impossible to advance into adulthood. As this becomes more and more of a crisis, the unconscious starts to seep in and threatens to overwhelm and drown the ego.

“Whatever one has within oneself but does not live, grows against one.”

Marie-Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus

There are also children that become mature too early, and grow up very quickly – the extreme opposite of the puer, these are neglected children. The hardships of life have forced them to become very realistic, independent, and disillusioned. You can generally tell from a bitter and falsely mature expression that something went wrong. They were pushed out of the childhood world too soon. Such people cannot love nor trust anybody, in that situation life has no meaning, because they have lost the magical aspect of the eternal youth. They always feel not quite real, only half alive. In therapy, the analyst has the difficult task of guiding them back to their childish fantasies, in order to deal with them correctly.

The eternal child also contains many positive qualities, a spirituality which comes from close contact with the unconscious. The puer is agreeable, has the charm of youth and starts invigorating and deep conversations. He appears as the divine child who symbolises newness, potential for growth, and hope for the future. Friedrich Nietzsche understood the importance of this. In fact, he considered the child to be the final metamorphosis to becoming who one is. He writes:

“The child is innocence and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelling wheel, a first motion, a sacred Yes. For the game of creating, my brothers, a sacred “yes” to life is needed.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

What is meant by the inner child is that which is born from the maturity of the adult. It is not a regression towards an infantile state of life, but a progression towards wholeness. We all have an inner child within us, even older people, who sometimes appear to return to the child-like state of innocence.

The eternal youth is one who is immersed in the moment and filled with wonder and playfulness, giving way to pure creativity. He is a Yes-sayer, the pinnacle of life-affirmation. He brings the heavenly realm into his earthly existence.

A passage from the bible reads:

“Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

Matthew 18:3

Senex and Puer

Illustration for The Sword in the Stone – Alan Lee

As we grow older, we enter the world of the senex, which is Latin for old man. He too possesses positive and negative aspects. Positively, he is a balanced person who is grounded, patient, conscientious, risk-averse, and controlled. Here he appears as the archetype of the wise old man. The negative side of the senex is cynicism, rigidity, materialism, reluctance to change, and a lack of a sense of humour.

The senex is the opposite of the puer archetype, though they must be seen as the opposite sides of the same coin. We recognize youth by knowing age; we become aware of ageing by remembering how we were when young. Jung writes:

“The puer’s shadow is the senex… associated with the god Apollo – disciplined, controlled, responsible, rational, ordered. Conversely, the shadow of the senex is the puer, related to Dionysus – unbounded, instinct, disorder, intoxication, whimsy.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 9.1: Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

The puer dreams big. The senex works hard. The ratio of one to the other varies from person to person. Both archetypes live within us, and both are necessary for a psychologically healthy life. A one-sided imbalance in either direction is not advisable.

The puer and senex have different versions of play. While the puer enjoys sports, socialising, games, eating out, going to the movies, etc., (which are all non-tangible products), the senex feels that play is engaging in a non-work activity that produces a tangible result: painting, cooking, writing, building, and so on.

The Role of Play in Jung’s Life

Jung was primarily a senex. He would make sculptures, carve inscriptions on stone, draw mandalas and create the red book, full of images from the unconscious.

In one of the most difficult periods of his life, which he called his confrontation with the unconscious, Jung felt a psychic disturbance in himself and went twice through all his childhood memories, to try to find the cause of the disturbance. But this retrospection led to nothing but a fresh acknowledgement of his own ignorance. He said to himself, “since I know nothing at all, I shall simply do whatever occurs to me.” He writes:

“The first thing that came to the surface was a childhood memory from perhaps my tenth or eleventh year. At that time I had a spell of playing passionately with building blocks. I distinctly recalled how I had built little houses and castles… These structures had fascinated me for a long time. To my astonishment, this memory was accompanied by a good deal of emotion. ‘Aha,’ I said to myself, ‘there is still life in these things. The small boy is still around, and possesses a creative life which I lack. But how can I make my way to it?’ ”

Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Jung realised that he had been neglecting his inner child. He felt humiliated to realise that he had to play childish games in his old age. Nevertheless, he started gathering stones and slowly built a miniature village. He went to his building game after the noon meal every day, until his patients arrived; and if he finished with his work early enough in the evening, he went back to building. In the course of this activity his thoughts clarified, and he felt a source of creativity, enthusiasm and a sense of renewal. He wrote:

“This moment was a turning point in my fate… I had… only the inner certainty that I was on the way to discovering my own myth. For the building game was only a beginning. It released a stream of fantasies which I later carefully wrote down.”

Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Jung’s most ambitious project of senex play was building The Tower, situated at Bollingen, a product of 12 years of work. It is a solitary place, surrounded by nature near Lake Zürich. He would spent several months there each year, and nourish his soul. He wrote:

“At Bollingen I am in the midst of my true life, I am most deeply myself.”

Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections

The Puer Aeternus and The Little Prince

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is one of the most well-known books in the world. He displays all the typical features of the puer aeternus, which, however, does not alter the fact that he was also a great writer. He worked as a professional aviator, and died during World War II in an airplane crash. When he was not allowed to fly he always became depressed, walking up and down in his flat from morning till evening, desperate and irritated.

In the book, Saint-Exupéry begins with an introduction, like part of a personal autobiographical account. The book is based on the imagination of children and is very dream-like.

The narrator starts by saying that at the age of six he read about boa constrictors swallowing their prey whole without chewing them, after which they are unable to move and sleep through the six months that they need for digestion. His first drawing, which looks ordinary, has the entire mystery of Saint-Exupéry’s life in it. He shows his masterpiece to the grown-ups and asks them whether the drawing frightened them, but they say: why should anyone be frightened by a hat?

But his drawing was not a picture of a hat, it was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. Since they were not able to understand it, he made another drawing. He draws inside of the boa constrictor so that they can see the elephant clearly, since adults always need to have things explained. The grown-ups respond by advising him to lay aside his drawings and focus on studying arithmetic, geography, grammar, etc. That is why, at the age of six, he gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter.

He then chose another profession and he learned to pilot airplanes, having flown all over the world. Whenever he met a grown-up, he would show them drawing number one, to find out if that person was of true understanding, but they would always say it looks like a hat. So he lived his whole life alone, without anyone that he could really talk to, until he had an accident with his plane in the desert. This experience is linked with his personal life, in which he nearly died of thirst, and experienced hallucinations. As he was trying to fix the plane, he heard an odd little voice say, “if you please – draw me a sheep!” It was the little prince, who had come down from the stars.

He shows him the hat, and the little prince says that he doesn’t want a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant, he wants a sheep. This magical being from the unconscious is the first person he has met that understood him. However, he does not know how to draw a sheep, and after several failures, he draws a box instead, and in a tricksterish fashion, says that the sheep he wants is inside it, for he is too busy trying to fix the engine of his plane. This symbolises the conflict between the demands of the inner and outer life, which poses a tremendous tension.

A common thing that a puer does is to put all his plans in a box, and store them away, in a gesture of boredom and impatience. This is the great danger. Perhaps the most important thing a puer can do is to take something seriously, and to stick to it.

This first part of the novella contains the whole problem of the puer aeternus in a nutshell.

We see that Saint-Exupéry has never really gotten used to living in the world of the adult. He was experiencing depression and disillusionment. It was as if his unconscious were saying to him that he must participate in the world and cannot always escape the unimaginative and banal world of everyday life. He felt as if his soul had been completely dried up, and that he was dying of thirst, hence the image of the desert. This mid-life crisis leads to conscious absent-mindedness and one little mistake can cost one’s life.

The adult world lacks enchantment of nature, and the magic found in fairy tales. It is totally dead. Saint-Exupéry writes:

“I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved anyone. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: “I am busy with matters of consequence!” And that makes him swell up with pride.”

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Saint-Exupéry speaks about the emptiness, idiocy, and meaninglessness of adulthood, and that the childhood life is the fantasy life, the artist’s life, the true life – all the rest is empty persona running after making money, making a prestige impression on other people, and having lost one’s true nature. The great problem is that he has not found a bridge by which he could take over the true life into the adult life.

The English poet William Wordsworth wrote about this poignantly:

“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore; –

Turn wheresoe’er I may

By night or day.

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

…

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

At length the Man perceives it die away

And fade into the light of common day.”

William Wordsworth, Immortality Ode

The fundamental question is: how can one grow up without losing the feeling of totality, the feeling of creativeness, magic, and of being really alive, which one had in youth?

What is really going on in Saint-Exupéry’s life is that his greater personality has been devoured by the mother, which suffocates life and prevents the human being from development and growth. One is permanently in the womb and never leaves the mother’s protective shell to go into the adult world. The Great Mother becomes the devouring mother, like the Hindu goddess Kali.

Saint-Exupéry never embarks on the hero’s journey, and that is the meaning of the elephant in the drawing, which is the greatest hero in Africa. In contrast to other mythological parallels, the swallowed hero cannot find his way out of his predator.

The elephant is generous, intelligent, taciturn, but irritable and inclined to terrible moods and fits of rage, which can only be appeased by music, not by sensual pleasures. Amazingly, these were also the outstanding qualities of Saint Exupéry. The elephant is the image in his soul of what he wanted to become, and it’s swallowed back by the devouring mother, the regressive tendencies of the unconscious, and later by death. But, Saint Exupéry did not know that, though von Franz says he came very close.

Integration of Puer Aeternus

To integrate the puer aeternus, one must bring oneself down to earth, not by having a one-sided view on the life of fantasy, but rather by exposing oneself to daily life, chores, and hard work.

The puer must also merge with the crowd, to become the sheep that Saint-Exupéry put into a box, though this isn’t without its dangers. A dangerous situation is cured by a dangerous situation. However, it is the anti-dote for a mother complex. Normally, very few young men have a strong enough individuality to pull away from the mother of their own accord; they do it via collectivity. This is the first step of the cure, it is only by immersing oneself in society that one can experience the warmth of human beings, have relatedness, and a sense of being part of a tribe that transcends individual desires and needs.

The second step is that the puer must take care not to lose his self in the crowd. He must simultaneously sacrifice his inflated specialness, and megalomania (which is his fake individuality) – and not lose his real individuality by becoming a mere number in the crowd. This can be done by balancing one’s social life with one’s spiritual life, for if one never spends time alone, one may never built an indestructible foundation, which is crucial for self-realisation. Nietzsche wrote:

“When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think as I really think; after a time it always seems as though they want to banish me from myself and rob me of my soul and I grow angry with everybody and fear everybody. I then require the desert, so as to grow good again.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, §491

Jung likened the human life span to the passage of the Sun over the course of 12 hours: the Sun rises and we begin the day (birth); the Sun rises in the sky (we grow from infancy to youth to young adulthood); the Sun comes to the zenith at noontime (mid-life, the peak of our abilities, vigour and, if we have been on the right path, career success); then the Sun begins to lose its altitude (we begin to age), until it finally sets (we die). These phases of life have different priorities, and specific types of psychology.

For Jung, the priority of the first half of life is a strengthening of the ego: work, education, relationships, and so on. It is only in the second half of life that we are sufficiently anchored in reality and our focus shifts to our inner world, to our quest for individuation. An imbalance in this transition is often the start of a mid-life crisis, the cry of the soul for growth.

Jung writes:

“The significance of the morning [of life] undoubtedly lies in the development of the individual, our entrenchment in the outer world, the propagation of our kind, and the care of our children. This is the obvious purpose of nature… Whoever carries over into the afternoon [of life] the law of the morning, or the natural aim, must pay for it with damage to his soul, just as surely as a growing youth who tries to carry over his childish egoism into adult life must pay for this mistake with social failure.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 8: Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche

Jung tells us that to cure the neurosis of the puer, one has to work. This is the most disagreeable word for a puer because he has to sacrifice the wonder of the fantasy realm to a conventional life, which requires commitment and responsibility. It seems like utter madness to him, because he is letting go of his specialness. The crucial step is that he must drive out his devils, and be careful that he doesn’t also drive out his angels. This can only be achieved by a focus on the inner world, and the outer world, which is the purpose of individuation.

Through work, the puer may actually become exceptional in reality, not in fantasy. It doesn’t matter if one has no idea which job is the right one, or what one really wants to do – one has to stick with any kind of job and immerse oneself in the outer world. Søren Kierkegaard calls this type of anxiety – the dizziness of freedom – the vertigo that comes from having to choose from a sea of infinite possibilities. Here one may either lose himself in the finite (becoming an imitation of other people), or lose oneself in the infinite (a state of analysis-paralysis where one thinks of all the possibilities but never acts).

The puer usually tries various different jobs but never sticks to one, and quits when it becomes too boring. While he can work, he’ll find it a chore. This is because he is working completely uphill in opposition to his own flow of energy. The puer knows that everything goes wrong because he is lazy, but he cannot want not to be lazy, and so he remains in depression.

We all possess a great storage of enthusiasm, which is kept hidden as long as we do not integrate the archetype of eternal youth. The unconscious indicates the direction in which there might be some enthusiasm or where energy flows naturally, for it is, of course, easier to train oneself to work in a direction supported by one’s instinct.

Nevertheless, in every field of work there always comes the time when routine must be faced. All work, even creative work, contains a certain amount of boring routine, which is when the puer complains.

When asked how one should live, Jung wrote:

“There is no single, definite way for the individual… if you want to go on your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other. If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and sure-footedly along the path prescribed by your unconscious. Then it is naturally no help at all to speculate about how you ought to live.”

Jung’s Letter to Frau V (15 December 1933)

Jung tells us that we shouldn’t spend time in useless speculation and waste our energy and our resources by thinking of how to live, but rather to toil the soil directly in front of us. As such, we are always doing something meaningful and intended by fate.

The puer denies the call to adventure in the Hero’s Journey, which separates the person from the aspects of their previous life and causes anxiety. He remains in the stage of refusal, and cannot leave the ordinary world and enter the special world, where he must confront his dragon (his worst fear, event, person, situation, or memory long avoided).

Thus, he cannot access his reward, a treasure chest full of inner gold that is guarded by the dragon. The puer remains in perpetual stagnation, because he cannot acquire the insight that comes from a psychological death and rebirth, the death of one’s old self, and the birth of a new and more capable self – without which there’s no individuation at all.

In some Native American rituals, young boys are gathered by the men and taken out in the middle of the night and dragged off into the wilderness, where they must pass trials for their initiation into manhood. This is the beginning of the Hero’s Journey. If he succeeds in slaying his dragon, he re-enters the community as a man who has left the realm of childhood. Manhood is different from being a man, it is a badge of honour one must earn. It creates a sense of autonomy and a growth in ego strength, a sense of belongingness, purpose and meaning. That’s something missing in a puer, who is often driven by a desire for safety and/or pleasure. Jung writes:

“For the hero, fear is a challenge and a task, because only boldness can deliver from fear. And if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is somehow violated, and the whole future is condemned to hopeless staleness, to a drab grey lit only by the will-o’-the-wisps.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 5: Symbols of Transformation

Initiation invites us to throw ourselves into the fire of life. In modern times, we lack these tribal initiations that were so important to our ancestors, and many men opt for alternatives such as military service, or the so-called “gym bro mentality”.

Some young men are hoping that something in life will carry them off, from the painful and mundane day to day life, like being thrown on an island where one must survive by building a fire, shelter, hunting for food, and so on. This is both terrifying, and exhilarating. In psychological terms, they are waiting for an archetype to activate in the psyche, and help orient them in life.

For a young woman it is marriage and childbearing that conquers the puella. There is a sacrificial moment that in order to incarnate the archetype of the mother, she has to put the archetype of Aphrodite into the sacrificial altar, and accept the fact that her body is going to look very different, and that she is going to feel different, after giving birth to a child. This enormous responsibility of the mother often causes the death of the puella. Though, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t cases in which a mother is still a puella, or a woman that has no children that is not a puella.

Dreams are an important source to integrate the puer. When the inner child appears in dreams, it’s always behind us and ahead of us, simultaneously. Behind us is the infantile shadow, that which always pulls us backward into being infantile, dependent, lazy, escaping problems, responsibility, and life. It must be sacrificed for us to become the hero. The child god that is ahead of us means renewal, the possibility of life continually growing and expanding.

When our ego attitude changes, the dreams respond. We can influence dreams by writing them down and giving meaning to them, and by drawing, and colouring it. This helps us to amplify the contents of the dream and bring the imaginary figures into reality, and the unconscious realises that one does this, because it changes too.

Dream images can be used in active imagination, when you enter your inner picture while being conscious, and continue to live in it and transform it, giving it a new life. Dreams tells us what to do with our lives, and we don’t have to worry when we don’t understand a dream, because a dream understands us.

Swiss artist Peter Birkhäuser had a dream of the puer aeternus, and made a painting. A wonderful, divine boy rides an extremely powerful wild horse – he comes from cosmic distances, from the boundless universe, in other words, from the collective unconscious. He rides through the space of the psyche like a new star in the heavens. It is an encounter with the archetype of the Self. He has four arms and out of one hand grows a magical eight-pointed flower (or he is holding it). The boy embodies quaternity, the universal expression of spiritual totality, and characteristic of most images of the divinity.

The English poet and visionary artist William Blake is an example of an individuated person having integrated his puer aeternus. He reminds us that if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite, opening us up to the mystery of the inner and the outer life.

“I feel that a man may be happy in this world, and I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see every thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike… The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way… As a man is so he sees.”

William Blake’s Letter to Dr. Trusler (23 August 1799)

The Psychology of The Man-Child (Puer Aeternus)

The term puer aeternus is Latin for eternal boy. Carl Jung used the term in the exploration of the psychology of eternal youth and creative child within every person.

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The Psychology of The Trickster

There is perhaps no figure in literature more fascinating than the trickster, appearing in various forms in the folklore of many cultures. He is different from the figure of the fool, who is harmless but also naïve, and many times ends up harming himself. The fool walks joyfully dreaming about all his adventures, unaware that if he takes just one more step, he would fall down a cliff.

Trickster is witty and deceitful. He is the timeless root of all the picaresque creations of world literature, and is not reducible to one single literary entity. Trickster tales have existed since ancient times, and has been said to be at the very foundation of civilisation and culture. They belong to the oldest expressions of mankind.

Table of contents

What is The Trickster?

Tricksters are the breakers of rules, agents of mischief, masters of deceit, and boundary crossers.

“[T]he best way to describe trickster is to say simply that the boundary is where he will be found – sometimes drawing the line, sometimes crossing it, sometimes erasing or moving it, but always there, the god of the threshold in all its forms.”

Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World

Tricksters are always “on the road”, they are the lords of in-between. While we endeavour to trace the trickster to his origin, he continues to play his tricks on us, always evasive, always crossing our conceptual boundaries of definition in which we try to confine him. Perhaps here is a first lesson to be learned from the trickster: whatever we do, he is always one step ahead of us.

The victims of people such as con men and snake oil salesmen, are those who are unconscious of trickster – they have been tricked by their own naivety, greed or self-deception. We have to be a little tricky, to guard against being tricked.

There can also be people who really believe that they are helping others, but are in fact tricking them. In this case, both perpetrator and victim are unconscious of trickster. Trickster is disruptive only when it operates unconsciously in our lives as an autonomous entity.

Another way the trickster can appear is as one who is not deceiving but telling you the truth, but we likely won’t believe him.

In medieval times, the jester was known to speak the truth without losing his head. He was the only person who received permission from the king to be allowed to tell it like it is, and was an important figure in the royal courts. To make his special privileges known, he wore a cap ‘n’ bells and a fool’s sceptre, mirroring the king’s crown and sceptre.

Primitive Form of The Trickster

Trickster is present in us as soon as we gain awareness of our ego in our childhood. It is the most primitive progression to the hero myth, but a necessary step towards becoming mature and whole.

“The Trickster cycle corresponds to the earliest and least developed period of life. Trickster is a figure whose physical appetites dominate his behaviour; he has the mentality of an infant. Lacking any purpose beyond the gratification of his primary needs, he is cruel, cynical, and unfeeling… This figure, which at the outset assumes the form of an animal, passes from one mischievous exploit to another. But, as he does so, a change comes over him. At the end of his rogue’s progress he is beginning to take on the physical likeness of a grown man.”

Man and His Symbols Part II, Ancient Myths and Modern Man – Joseph L. Henderson

Trickster rises against the restrictions and authorities. Just like the id, the unconscious instinctual component that is present at birth, the source of instant gratification, of bodily needs and wants, emotional impulses, and drives – that is in constant conflict with the superego, the internalisation of cultural rules, which helps us act in socially acceptable ways. Tricksters usually have an enormous libido, and often present scatological themes.

Trickster and Laughter

An early and innocent form of trickster is parents playing peekaboo with their children to make them laugh.

Trickster comes to us when we are too serious, rigid, when we follow rules and schedules, and when we lack a sense of humour. He causes us to forget what we intended to remember, say things we later regret, or appear in the form of a Freudian slip, and cause laughter.

Perhaps no philosopher has written about the importance of laughter as eloquently as Nietzsche. He writes:

“I would really allow myself to order the ranks of philosophers according to the rank of their laughter – right up to those who are capable of golden laughter. And assuming that the gods also practise philosophy… I don’t doubt that in the process they know how to laugh in a superhuman and new way – and at the expense of all serious things! Gods delight in making fun: even where sacred actions are concerned, it seems they cannot stop laughing.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §294

Laughter mediates between the sacred and the profane, where trickster resides. Laughter represents an attitude toward life and toward oneself, especially, laughing at oneself. To laugh is deep inner work, it breaks through our persona, and opens us up to a profound message.

Trickster pinches us and tells us that life is a play. We are the actors on a vast stage following a predetermined script. However, he also tells us that we don’t necessarily have to follow the script, that we can make our own, improvise and not be afraid of making mistakes, but rather laugh at them. We have the freedom and responsibility to do so. This is a core aspect of existentialist philosophy which teaches us to become authentic and discover who we truly are.

We can deceive others or be deceived, but we can never deceive ourselves. Trickster forces us to look at ourselves in the mirror, and to the persona that we are putting on to impress others, to the detriment of our instinctual needs, our creativity and playfulness that is so vital to give us the energy that we need in our daily life.

Trickster as Agent of Change

The Court Jester – Claude Andrew Calthrop

Trickster is against any authority, as he wants to do what’s best for him, and he is never going to put someone else before himself. He pokes holes in rigid boundaries and calls into question fundamental assumptions about the way the world is organised, and reveals the possibility of transforming them (even if often for ignoble ends). It is the figure that pushes us to question those in power, and the limitations, and rules that are imposed on us.

His energy sweeps in and delivers hard knocks in an attempt to wake us up as individuals and as a culture. He steps in and points things out, asking a culture to look at its own folly, addressing hot topics with wit and humour, shining a light into shadowy areas and bring public attention to the underbelly of society.

Comedians help deliver the trickster’s message, which can often be at the cost of their own mental stability. Comedians are important figures and help society as a whole. When comedy is supressed, there are severe consequences – since the trickster will remain unconscious. However, the trickster will find a way out, and if one ignores him, he will appear in the form of a neurosis.

Doubt is a precursor to change and trickster is all about change. The problem then is not doubt; the problem is fear of change. Confronting the risk of doubt is necessary for any individual to grow. As an agent of change, Trickster triggers our fear of change and is an uneasy yet essential companion on the path of growth.

“[T]he origins, liveliness, and durability of culture require that there be space for figures whose function is to uncover and disrupt the very things that cultures are based on.”

Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World

Trickster as Creator and Destroyer

The totality of life consists of order and chaos, and the spirit of this disorder is the trickster. He is the Dionysian god of wine and music that connects us to instinctual forces that lie outside the bounds of all things civilised, and who seeks to break conventions and take us into wild, untamed places. Nietzsche, who called himself the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, wrote:

“I say to you: one must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Without chaos, society loses its culture, the system becomes flawed, stale and bureaucratic. Therefore, trickster not only destroys old values, but also creates new values. He reshapes the surrounding world with inner magic, continually weaving old into new.

“[I]n spite of all their disruptive behaviour, tricksters are regularly honoured as the creators of culture. They are imagined not only to have stolen certain essential goods from heaven and given them to the race but to have gone on and helped shape this world so as to make it a hospitable place for human life.”

Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World

Apart from creation, trickster teaches us that we all have the capacity for destruction.

“Trickster is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes and who is always duped himself.”

Paul Radin, The Trickster

The person who appears to be too kind, or pure on the outside, and is supressing his true emotions, may suddenly become self-destructive or engage in sinful behaviours. Intuitively, we may feel that there’s something “off” about such a person, and that he is putting on a persona. It is as if trickster is compelling him and insisting that he do the very thing that consciousness prohibits, and also tricking him into revealing that about himself.

One shouldn’t try to live at the extreme end, but rather achieve a balance and make peace with one’s dark aspects. The psyche compensates to achieve equilibrium and wholeness.

Trickster as Amoral

Because trickster disrupts convention, he is commonly cast in a negative light. However, this is wrong, since he knows neither good nor evil, yet he is responsible for both. He has both a light side, and a dark side. Though, he always presents an element of playfulness, that is what defines trickster.

Trickster possesses no values, moral or social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites, yet through his actions all values come into being. His creative cleverness amazes us and keeps alive the possibility of transcending the social restrictions we regularly encounter.

Unlike the devil, who is an agent of evil, trickster is amoral, not immoral. Morality is a structure of society and ego-consciousness, the unconscious does not play by our rules. Trickster epitomises the paradox of the human condition. He occupies the peculiar unity of the liminal: that which is neither this nor that, and yet is both.

As humans, we struggle to understand paradox, contradiction, and to grasp the possibility that unity can underlie apparent duality.

Trickster Figures

Loki with a fishing net (per Reginsmál) as depicted on an 18th-century Icelandic manuscript (SÁM 66)

Trickster is often identified with specific animals, taking the form of a fox, raven, monkey, coyote, hare, or spider, among others. He possess no well-defined and fixed form. As a shapeshifter, he is just like liquid, escapable. Trickster can cleverly show up in any guise and imitate the form of other animals, yet we can identify trickster energy by the very nature of its changeability and its incendiary actions. Whatever form he takes, he is a primordial being of the same order as the gods and heroes of mythology.

In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a trickster who stole fire from the gods to give it to mankind, to the displeasure of the gods, for mankind was not ready to use this principle in a creative, unselfish manner. However, this is precisely what made us human in the first place, as fire was essential for the evolution of man. Here we find a paradox, that which is necessary for the progress of the human species, is also capable of destroying us. One may think here of artificial intelligence or the singularity.

When trickster is punished, he is replaced by stupidity. Prometheus is punished by the gods and is replaced by his brother Epimetheus. Prometheus is the forethinker, who thinks before he acts, while Epimetheus is the afterthinker, who acts before he thinks. One might almost say that in them a single primitive being, sly and stupid at once, has been split into a duality.

Another trickster figure is Br’er Rabbit, a character from African American folktales who is portrayed as an underdog and is weaker than his opponents, thus gaining the audience’s sympathy. In the stories, he gets himself into trouble through his own mischievous nature, and then must use his cleverness and ability to deceive and outsmart larger and stronger animals, take control of the situation and get himself out of trouble.

Anansi the spider is an African trickster. He is a morally ambiguous character who fools humans and gods alike. His tricks are enhanced by his ability to change form and take whatever shape best suits his escapade. Yet some also cast him as divine creator who spun the entire world into being, bringing stories and wisdom to the world.

Similarly, in Native American culture, Iktomi is a spider-trickster spirit. He was once Wisdom, but was stripped of the title because of his troublemaking ways. His malicious plans often failed, so these tales were usually told as a way to teach lessons to the youth. He gives the dreamcatcher to people for protection. Folk tales unveil how he is respected, feared, and mocked. He can use strings to control humans like puppets, and has the power to make potions that change gods. According to a prophecy, his web would spread over the land. This can be interpreted as the telephone network, and then the Internet – the world-wide web. Iktomi has been considered from time immemorial to be the patron of new technology.

The myth is a way for the psyche to talk about itself. Many of the Native American people consider Iktomi to be the god of the Europeans, who (they claim) seem to readily follow his bizarre behaviour and self-entrapping tricks.

Coyote is another important trickster figure in Native American folklore. The European equivalent is Reynard the Fox.

One of the most popular figures in Norse mythology is Loki, the trickster God. By trickery, and mischief, he causes the death of Baldur, the most beloved of all the gods. Loki is soon found to be guilty and is punished, and the gods knew that this event was the foreshadowing of Ragnarök, the downfall and death of the gods, and of the very cosmos they maintained. In other words, if one ties down the trickster, that will destroy the world.

The Greek deity Hermes is a troublemaker and thief, as well as a beneficent creator who brought fire and music, among other things, to the human realm. His divine status, however, is unclear at his birth. He is born as an outsider, but wants to be an insider. Through his early exploits as a trickster, such as stealing Apollo’s cattle, he wins the admiration of Zeus and an uncontested place on Mount Olympus, the home of the Greek gods. Hermes is a divine trickster, psychopomp, and messenger of the gods, negotiating the boundary between man, and god, matter and spirit. He is the only God who can traverse all three realms: Mount Olympus, earth, and the underworld. And perhaps even, as mediator between the dream world and waking life.

Hermes is a third way of life, besides the Apollonian rational and the Dionysian irrational. He is the God of jokes and journeys, the tricky guide of souls.

When enemies invaded his city, Hermes dressed as a simple shepherd and carried a ram around the city, and wherever he walked he created safety. He showed people that he was their ally in any battle they might encounter, and protector in any danger. This reminds one of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, carrying the lost sheep back to the flock. The trickster god also has a protective energy.

Many tribes wear masks and abandon their personality, becoming possessed by the spirit of the trickster. Rituals are an important element of trickster. If the ritual setting is missing, trickster is missing. The behaviour of the tribes become eccentric, comic, and rude. However, the sacredness connects these traits with fertility, wellness, and joy. In the ambiguous character of the trickster, we can observe the close connection between the realms of the sacred and the profane.

Trickster strikes a deeper human chord. He performs a fundamental cultural work, and in understanding the trickster better, we understand ourselves better, in the unconscious aspects of ourselves that respond to the trickster’s unsettling and transformative behaviour. When we describe trickster phenomena we are always describing aspects of ourselves. He is a speculum mentis, a mirror into the mind – common to all mankind, which at a certain period in our history, gave us a picture of the world and of ourselves. The problem is primarily a psychological one, an attempt by man to solve his problems inward and outward.

The Psychology of The Trickster

Keying up – The Court Jester – William Merrit Chase

Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Jung calls the figure of the trickster an archetype. It is part of the collective unconscious, the inherited and universal structure present in everyone, which is deeper than the layer of the personal unconscious, that is formed by the experience gathered through life. Archetypes are primordial patterns or imprints of the experience of our ancestors, the primary source of psychic symbols, which attract energy and structure it, and lead ultimately to the creation of civilisation and culture. Trickster is everywhere, he is an eternal state of mind.

Archetypes appear cross-culturally as images, symbols, and motifs found recurrently in myth, religion, and art throughout history. There are numerous examples of archetypes such as The Wise Old Man, The Great Mother, The Hero, and The Trickster, to name a few. Trickster is the archetype who attacks all archetypes. Jung stated that there are as many archetypes, as typical situations there are in life. We cannot observe them directly, but they have a great impact on our personal activities, and way of thinking. It is the deep and dark place where impulses and instincts emerge. Archetypes are organs of the soul, the tissue of the structure of the unconscious. They are living personalities within us, autonomous, and numinous. If they get enough energy, archetypes can have control over a person.

The unconscious is older than consciousness. It is primordial, from which consciousness arises. Thus, our conscious life “dresses” and guides our actions, but it is impossible for something to appear in consciousness without having roots in the unconscious.

The mythological features of the trickster extend even to the highest regions of man’s spiritual development. In the early Middle ages, strange customs were taking place. Jung writes:

“In the very midst of divine service masquerades with grotesque faces, disguised as women, lions, and mummers, performed their dances, sang indecent songs in the choir, ate their greasy food from a corner of the altar near the priest celebrating mass, got out their games of dice, burned a stinking incense made of old shoe leather, and ran and hopped about all over the church.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 9.1: On The Psychology of the Trickster Figure

These pagan rituals were uncommonly popular and it required considerable time and effort to free the church from them. The phantom of the trickster, however, continues to haunt the mythology of all ages. Jung writes:

“He is obviously a “psychologem,” an archetypal psychic structure of extreme antiquity. In his clearest manifestations he is a faithful reflection of an absolutely undifferentiated human consciousness, corresponding to a psyche that has hardly left the animal level.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 9.1: On The Psychology of the Trickster Figure

The trickster myth reflects an earlier, rudimentary stage of consciousness – a collective personification that is the product of an aggregate of individuals, and is welcomed by each individual as something known to him, which would not be the case if it were just an individual outgrowth. If the myth were nothing but a historical remnant, one would have to ask why it has not long since vanished into the great rubbish-heap of the past, and why it continues to make its influence felt on the highest levels of civilisation.

The trickster points back to a primitive stage of consciousness which existed before the birth of the myth. Only when our consciousness reached a higher level could we detach the earlier state of ourselves and say anything about it.

“He [the trickster] is a forerunner of the saviour, and, like him, God, man, and animal at once. He is both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine being, whose chief and most alarming characteristic is his unconsciousness… He is so unconscious of himself that his body is not a unity, and his two hands fight each other.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 9.1: On The Psychology of the Trickster Figure

The trickster is a primitive “cosmic” being of divine-animal nature, on the hand superior to man because of his superhuman qualities, and on the other hand inferior to him because of his unconsciousness.

The myth of the trickster, like many other myths, is supposed to have a therapeutic effect. It holds the earlier low intellectual and moral level before the eyes of the more highly developed individual, so that he shall not forget how things looked yesterday.

Trickster and Shadow

“The so-called civilised man has forgotten the trickster. He remembers him only figuratively and metaphorically, when, irritated by his own ineptitude, he speaks of fate playing tricks on him or of things being bewitched. He never suspects that his own hidden and apparently harmless shadow has qualities whose dangerousness exceeds his wildest dreams.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 9.1: On The Psychology of the Trickster Figure

For Jung, the trickster forms part of the shadow, both of which are dangerous to the extent that we keep them hidden from ourselves and project it onto others. He writes:

“The trickster is a collective shadow figure, a summation of all the inferior traits of character in individuals. And since the individual shadow is never absent as a component of personality, the collective figure can construct itself out of it continually. Not always, of course, as a mythological figure, but, in consequence of the increasing repression and neglect of the original mythologems, as a corresponding projection on other social groups and nations.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 9.1: On The Psychology of the Trickster Figure

The collective trickster energy is present in someone who looks like a leader, but is really the great pretender, one who convinces the people by promising truths, but delivering lies. This figure appears, disappears, and reappears – throughout all of human history.

We think that the danger is the one who’s trying to break into our house, but little do we know of the dangers of the unknown and repressed part of ourselves, which causes us to lose our own self.

“Ourself, behind ourself concealed, should startle most.”

Emily Dickinson, One need not be a Chamber to be Haunted

The trickster accompanies us into the rabbit hole, to the depths of our unknown self, to the valley of the shadow of death. However scary it is, trickster helps us to find depths in ourselves that we didn’t know were there.

Trickster and Ego Inflation

While the shadow helps us know our morality, the trickster is concerned with helping us reduce the sin of pride. He keeps us from being too confident in ourselves, since hubris forecasts a fall.

Trickster is important in individuation because he helps deflate ego inflation: when we become controlling, arrogant or narcissistic.

The healthy ego is our sense of who we are, serving as a bridge to the inner world.

“The trickster is the ego demolitions expert who helps us become more realistic about our psychological limitations and ultimately our spiritual limitlessness. This is an energy within ourselves and within the universe that humbles us, topples our ego, upsets our plans, demonstrates to us how little our wishes matter, and dissolves the forms that no longer serve us though we may be clinging to them for dear life.”

Dave Richo, The Power of Coincidence

When the ego is at its height, the trickster takes a little pin and bursts our “bubble of greatness”, and as we start to see the reality of things, everything that we thought to be meaningful (power, money, fame, pleasure) becomes meaningless.

Trickster helps to humble us down, and tells us that our power is limited in the vast universe. This surrender is a necessity for self-realisation and a connection with the divine.

Instead of the great helping the lowly, trickster reverses this and disguises himself as someone very lowly, but this lowly person overcomes the so-called great person, one who has an inflated ego. The bible has a passage that expresses this trickster energy clearly:

“But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are.”

1 Corinthians 1:26-28

No matter how lowly you are, or how utterly useless you might feel in life. There is always something in the higher Self or God that still calls you.

The Trickster in Alchemy

In alchemy, the trickster archetype manifests as the elusive symbol of Mercurius, the Roman equivalent of Hermes, who is fluid like quicksilver. Jung writes:

“A curious combination of typical trickster motifs can be found in the alchemical figure of Mercurius; for instance, his fondness for sly jokes and malicious pranks, his powers as a shape-shifter, his dual nature, half animal, half divine, his exposure to all kinds of tortures, and – last but not least – his approximation to the figure of a saviour.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol.9 Part I: On The Psychology of the Trickster Figure

Mercurius masterfully holds the duality of spirit and matter, and is associated with the lapis philosophorum (philosophers’ stone) or the Self. He is paradoxically associated to Christ and to Lucifer, the light-bringer.

“In comparison with the purity and unity of the Christ symbol, Mercurius-lapis is ambiguous, dark, paradoxical and thoroughly pagan. It therefore represents a part of the psyche which was certainly not moulded by Christianity and can on no account be expressed by the symbol “Christ”. On the contrary, as we have seen, in many ways it points to the devil, who is known at times to disguise himself as an angel of light.”

Carl Jung. C.W. Vol. 13: Alchemical Studies

The paradoxical nature of Mercurius reflects an important aspect of the Self, the fact that it is essentially a union of opposites, and indeed can be nothing else if it is to represent any kind of totality. The elusive philosophers’ stone, the central symbol of alchemy, which allows one to turn base matter into gold, is a product of a real trickster, Mercurius, who drove the alchemists to despair. For Jung, the philosophers’ stone is not found externally, but in ourselves.

The trickster, in the form of the alchemical Mercurius, can be said to contain the totality of the psyche, both the unconscious and the conscious mind, the known and the unknown, and the light and dark within us all.

The psyche seeks balance, not staying in extremes, but a combination of opposites. The transcendent function in alchemy is where the psyche finds the midpoint. This occurs when the time is just right, that is, in synchronicity.

In a way, “not enough” or “too much” are the trickster, the extremes are how we get tricked. However, trickster is trying to point us towards the centre, to the path of individuation.

This reminds one of what Aristotle said about virtue, that it is a point between a deficiency and an excess of a trait. For instance, the golden mean of confidence is between self-deprecation and vanity. As one becomes more balanced in life, one also reaches psychic wholeness.

Conclusion

Un Giullare – Giovanni Battista Quadrone

Tricksters are always on the scene, attempting to show culture its shadow and the inevitable changes that are afoot. In mythological terms, the battle between the forces of creation and destruction, as typified by trickster polarity, are as alive and well in the modern world as they were for our ancestors. Trickster makes its way to the world stage via the psyche of the individual. We must come to terms with inner conflicts in order to gain more clarity about the outer conflicts we seem, as a culture, to be mired in.

The integration of the trickster archetype allows us to go from being ruled by our own self-centred ego to a new way of living, in which one has integrity and relatedness. It allows us to become aware of our true emotions, behaviours, and thoughts, that our unconscious persona is hiding, and without which there is no individuation at all. In other words, trickster allows us to discover our Self, the totality of the personality which unites the opposites of consciousness and the unconscious and holds everything together in balance and unity.

Trickster attempts to wake us up and in the process, shake us to the core of our being. Perhaps this is because he embodies fundamental patterns that we fiercely struggle with and desperately need to reconcile within ourselves and our world. Through negotiating and disrupting conventions and boundaries, trickster broadens the realm of human potential. While trickster may bring us difficult lessons, he is also the force that allows us to imagine and create entirely new possibilities.

“In the history of the collective as in the history of the individual, everything depends on the development of consciousness. This gradually brings liberation from imprisonment in unconsciousness, and [the trickster] is therefore a bringer of light as well as of healing.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol.9 Part I: On The Psychology of the Trickster Figure

The Psychology of The Trickster

Trickster tales have existed since ancient times, and has been said to be at the very foundation of civilisation and culture. They belong to the oldest expressions of mankind.

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Theseus and the Minotaur in the Labyrinth – Edward Burne-Jones

The Dark World of Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka is one of the major figures of 20^th century literature who received little public attention during his lifetime. He dealt with existentialist themes such as alienation, anxiety, disorientation and the absurd. It is hard to put Kafka into a box. Many people have tried to read his work in the lens of psychoanalysis, existentialism, Judaism, Marxism, and so on, but Kafka eschews reduction to one single view. The magic of reading Kafka is that we all come up with our own interpretations, and that there is no one definite or true interpretation.

His work is so original that the term Kafkaesque was coined to describe the atmosphere of his work: the nightmarish, bizarre or illogical situations. Throughout his works we see the strange dream-like mixture of perplexity and embarrassment play out, such as having some simple task to do that turns out to be so complex that it seems to have no end, and the notion of a grand organisation with its incomprehensible bureaucratic system that hovers invisibly over each individual, and has complete power over one’s life.

Table of contents

The Life of Kafka

Kafka was a German-speaking novelist born in 1883 into a middle-class Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and today the capital of the Czech Republic.

Kafka’s childhood was a lonely one, he often felt like an outsider. He felt alienated, firstly as a Jew at a time of rising anti-Semitism, and secondly as a German speaker in a predominantly Czech nation.

His father was a self-made man, who rose from a poor and uneducated background by creating a successful business and, who had a significant influence on Kafka’s writings: the strong, confident, and ultimate authority, in contrast to the shyness and frailness of Kafka. His father could not relate to his literary work and wanted him to follow his footsteps as a businessman. This naturally created conflicts. In fact, Kafka later wrote a very long letter on the emotionally abusive character of his father, which was never delivered.

“Dearest Father, you asked me recently why I maintain that I am afraid of you. As usual, I was unable to think of any answer to your question, partly for the very reason that I am afraid of you, and partly because an explanation of the grounds for this fear would mean going into far more details than I could even approximately keep in mind while talking. And if I now try to give you an answer in writing, it will still be very incomplete.”

Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father

Kafka, however, also held his father in high esteem, and admired his vitality and competency to deal with life, though there remained a hidden resentment of his father forcing him into a profession that didn’t suit him.

Kafka obtained the degree of Doctor of Law and had a compulsory one year unpaid training as a law clerk for the civil and criminal courts. He was later employed in an insurance company. He worked hard and was rapidly promoted. However, the long working hours overwhelmed him and he wanted time to write and read. In the story Poseidon, Kafka imagines a sea-god so overwhelmed with administrative paperwork that he never gets to sail or swim. His office job was an impediment to his true vocation as a writer, which he would often pursue late into the night. He wrote:

“My life consists, and basically always consisted, of attempts at writing, mostly unsuccessful. But when I didn’t write, I was at once flat on the floor, fit for the dustbin. My energies have always been pitifully weak.”

Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

At the office, Kafka lived up to his outward duties, but not to his inner duties, and those unfulfilled duties grew into a permanent torment.

“Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That’s why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep.”

Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

For Kafka, writing was a form of prayer. At the age of 29, Kafka experienced a creative outburst and wrote The Judgment in one sitting. As dark as the story is, in which the protagonist’s father sentences his son to death by drowning, Kafka described it as the total opening of body and soul, a sort of baptism, a death and a rebirth. At this moment he felt as if he had found himself, and accepted himself as a writer. Kafka wrote first of all for himself out of an internal compulsion, but what he wrote became, almost coincidentally, of worldwide importance.

Kafka had various unsuccessful love affairs with women, and only seemed to have found a hint of peace at the very end of his life. He suffered from social anxiety, and low self-confidence (especially because of his body). At times, he believed that people found him physically repulsive. He also had frequent migraines, insomnia, and other ailments. He tried to counteract this by following a strict diet and doing physical activity. At times, he contemplated suicide.

“Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often – and in my inmost self perhaps all the time – I doubt whether I am a human being.”

Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

In 1917, Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis, at the time an incurable disease. In 1924, at the age of 40, Kafka could no longer take any nourishment as his laryngeal tuberculosis worsened. He died by starvation. “There is infinite hope,” Kafka tells us, “only not for us.” His father is said to have wept bitterly at his funeral.

Kafka only published a few stories during his lifetime. One of his last short stories was A Hunger Artist, the story of an artist who would sit in a cage and go without eating for many weeks, while spectators would gather around and watch him, many suspected he was cheating – which would make the artist angry. Eventually, he became to be completely ignored by the public. Before he died, he apologises and says that he should never have been admired, since the only reason he was fasting and remained hungry, was because he could not find any food he liked. The artist was replaced by a panther, attracting large crowds to watch him eat his favourite food.

Most of Kafka’s work, however, remained unpublished. He would write furiously throughout his life, revising rather little, but ceasing when authenticity no longer seemed to be present, or leave his works in an “open” state. Incompletion is a quality of his work, a facet of its originality. He never considered fame important.

“Many years ago… I went over the wishes that I wanted to realise in life. I found that the most important or the most delightful was the wish to attain a view of life (and… to convince others of it in writing), in which life, while still retaining its natural full-bodied rise and fall, would simultaneously be recognised no less clearly as a nothing, a dream, a dim hovering. A beautiful wish, perhaps, if I had wished it rightly.”

Franz Kafka, Notebooks (February 15, 1920)

Kafka left all of his unfinished work to his lifelong friend, Max Brod, a fellow law student, with explicit instructions for it to be burned and unread. Brod, who was a successful and prolific writer in his time, refused to do so, he had realised that Kafka was no ordinary talent, but a genius. He saw the value of Kafka’s virtually unrecognised work and decided that it must be published. In fact, Brod had told Kafka that he would never get rid of his works.

Brod wrote the first biography of Kafka in 1937, and rescued Kafka’s unfinished works when he fled from Prague to Tel Aviv, penniless and with a single suitcase. He started editing and organising all of Kafka’s works, and published them. Kafka’s unique work rapidly attracted widespread attention.

While Kafka may appear as a dark and gloomy person, Brod actually described him as one of the most entertaining people he had met, and who possessed a great sense of humour, though this was only noticeable in his small group of friends, not in large crowds. This can also be seen in many of his works, which is often a mix of tragedy and subtle comedy. Kafka used to read his work aloud to friends, sometimes laughing so hard he could not continue reading.

“Kafka’s comedy is always also tragedy, and this tragedy always also an immense and reverent joy… the really central Kafka joke – [is] that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.”

David Foster Wallace, Speech at “Metamorphosis: A New Kafka”

We will be focusing on three of Kafka’s most popular works: The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle.

The Metamorphosis (1915)

The Metamorphosis is a short story published in 1915 and is the most popular of Kafka’s writings. It starts off with one of the most iconic opening lines in literature:

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”

Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

The protagonist, Gregor, a travelling salesman, is metamorphosed into a giant insect, however he still retains his human consciousness. The insect itself cannot be depicted. He thinks it is all a dream and tries go to back to sleep, but starts reflecting on his strenuous travelling career, where he is unable to form friendly relationships as he is always on the go. He wants to leave his job but is unable to do so, as he is the bread winner in the family. Gregor is already alienated prior to his transformation. Now, his alienation is intensified. He is a human imprisoned in a non-human body. This reflects Kafka’s personal feelings about himself.

Gregor realises that he has overslept and is late for work but is unable to get out of bed. The contrast between the extraordinary situation of Gregor’s transformation and the ordinary terms he uses to describe it (an insect trying to get to work), creates a sense of the absurd.

His mother knocks on the door but as he tries to speak, he squeaks and his words appear incomprehensible. The family suspects he may be ill and beg him to unlock the door. After much effort, Gregor drags himself along the floor and opens the door with his mouth, injuring himself. He delivers a long speech to the office manager who has come to visit him, but the latter is horrified and flees. Gregor’s family is also terrified, and he is driven back to his room, with the door slammed shut.

The family start to take responsibility and prioritise finding a job, whereas before Gregor’s transformation, they happily took his money, although there was no longer much warm affection given in return. They were the parasites – though Gregor never complained about that.

Gregor finds out that he cannot eat the fresh food provided by his sister, and only has an appetite for rotten food scraps. He also prefers darker spaces and enjoys crawling on the walls and ceiling. However, he is simultaneously attached to his family and to some of the possessions of his room, which the family tries to remove to give him more space. Gregor tries to reconcile his human emotions and history with the physical urges of his new body, making him behave, on the outside, more and more like an insect.

The family start discussing if Gregor is still human and if so, to what degree. One can think of a few things more frustrating than being stuck in an alien body without being able to communicate to your family that you are still exactly who you used to be. This creates a disturbing psychological distance between his mind and his body.

The family think about:

“… their total despair, and the thought that they had been struck with a misfortune unlike anything experienced by anyone else they knew or were related to.”

Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

His father, repeats “If he could just understand us”, indicating that there is still hope that Gregor’s mind remains intact. His mother calls him her unfortunate son. Gregor thinks:

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”

Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

However, his sister convinces her parents that he is a parasite, an inconvenience who only puts more pressure on their financial situation. She says that nothing of Gregor exists in the insect, and that the real Gregor would’ve understood them and left on his own accord, letting them carry on with their lives and remember him with respect.

Gregor is increasingly neglected by his family, he barely eats food and suffers from several injuries.

“He thought back of his family with emotion and love… he felt that he must go away even more strongly than his sister… He watched as it slowly began to get light everywhere outside… and his last breath flowed weakly from his nostrils.”

Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

The story ends with the family briefly mourning the loss, and then taking a day off from their work. The warm sunshine creates a marked contrast from the dark and confined apartment, creating a sense of hope for the future.

The Trial (1925)

The Trial is a novel that was published posthumously in 1925, Kafka left it in unordered chapters, and the final version of the novel remains unknown. The chapters as we have them today are the sequence that Brod put them in.

“Somebody must have made a false accusation against Josef K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong.”

Franz Kafka, The Trial

On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, the protagonist Josef K., a bank administrator, wakes up to find two strange men with black suits enter his room. He hears the supervisor shout his name from the next room. This is the start of an interrogation where K., states that he has been accused of an unspecified and unknown crime. K. is unaware of who accused him or the authority in charge. The supervisor tells him that he and the others are of minor importance and know nothing of his case, they were merely sent by their superiors.

While K. is under arrest, however, he is free to go to work and won’t be hampered in his normal way of life. K. has been notified by telephone that a brief examination into his case would be held. He has not been summoned at any particular hour, and has only been given small details of the location.

Naturally, he has great trouble in finding the court, he goes floor by floor searching for the room, in the maze-like building. They were treating him with peculiar negligence or indifference. When he finds the place in the attic, he is scolded for arriving late. K., states:

“There is no doubt that behind all the utterances of this court, and therefore behind my arrest and today’s examination, there stands a great organisation. An organisation which not only employs corrupt warders and fatuous supervisors and examining magistrates, of whom the best that can be said is that they are humble officials, but also supports a judiciary of the highest rank with its inevitable vast retinue of servants, secretaries, police officers, and other assistants, perhaps even executioners – I don’t shrink from the word. And the purpose of this great organisation, gentlemen? To arrest innocent persons and start proceedings against them which are pointless and mostly, as in my case, inconclusive.”

Franz Kafka, The Trial

K. is burdened with the absurd task of defending himself while being ignorant of the actual accusation. He finds out that the law books present in the court were full of indecent pictures, these were the people who he was being judged against. One cannot help but fall into the depth of despair when encountering obstacles one cannot overcome. The hierarchical structure of the court was endless and beyond the comprehension even of the initiated. Sometimes one simply felt astonished that an average lifetime was long enough for the acquisition of the amount of knowledge one needed to work against the great organisation with any degree of success. Progress was always being made, but the nature of this progress could never be communicated. It is catch-22, if we don’t know the law, we are obviously guilty. If we know it and can’t observe its innumerable, and tiny details, we are guilty also.

K. still had to work in the bank, and try to keep the case a secret, though rumours were starting to spread. When K., visits Titorelli, a court painter who has a great deal of knowledge of the processes within the court, he is shown a painting of a judge commissioned by the courts. Behind the judge is the figure of Justice who is also the goddess of Victory. However, the figure appears to be running, so that the scales are not balanced. K., looks closer and remarks that it really looks like the goddess of the Hunt. Kafka makes us think that the court which states that it is concerned with justice, is in fact concerned with hunting down the culprit and triumphing over him.

While K. is innocent, Titorelli admits that once a person is considered guilty, the court can never be persuaded to change its opinion, and the highest court is inaccessible to all.

The court is completely impervious to proof. However, impervious only to proof presented before the court. There is no definite acquittal, that is, one cannot be freed from being charged with an offense, however, through personal influences, one can prolong the final sentence so that one appears to be free, temporarily free. For the time being one is detached from the charge, but it still hovers over one and can be instantly reactivated as soon as the order comes from above. The court never forgets. K. still has to be interrogated, sessions are to be held, the case has to be constantly moving, so that from outside something must be seen to be going on. It’s all a big show.

K’s advocate is also incompetent, giving promises of later success, references to progress, but also to the immense difficulties confronting the work. Everything so sickeningly familiar would be produced again to fool K. once more with vague hopes and to torment him with vague fears.

K. shows up at a cathedral, where he was supposed to accompany an important client. However, the man never shows up. Night falls, and as he is leaving, a priest shouts his name. It is the prison chaplain, who tells him that he has been summoned and that his guilt is now considered a proven fact.

The priest tells him a parable:

“Before the law stands a doorkeeper. A man from the country comes to this doorkeeper and asks for entry into the law. But the doorkeeper says he cannot grant him entry now. The man considers and then asks if that means he will be allowed to enter later. “It is possible,” says the doorkeeper, “but not now.” … “If you are so tempted, just try to enter in spite of my prohibition. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the lowest doorkeeper. But from room to room stand doorkeepers each more powerful than the last. The mere aspect of the third is more than even I can endure.” Such difficulties had not been expected by the man from the country; the law is supposed to be accessible to everyone and at all times… he decides it would be better to wait until he gets permission to enter… There he sits for days and years… Finally his sight grows weak and he does not know if it is really getting darker round him or if his eyes are deceiving him. But he does manage to distinguish in the dark a radiance which breaks out imperishably from the door.”

Franz Kafka, The Trial

The man is so caught up with this doorkeeper, that it seems to him the only obstacle to his entry into the law. He grows old and weak, and all his time spent waiting is condensed into one question, not yet put to the doorkeeper:

“ ‘But everybody strives for the law,’ says the man. ‘How is it that in all these years nobody except myself has asked for admittance?’ ”

Franz Kafka, The Trial

The doorkeeper, who realises the man has reached the end of his life shouts:

“Nobody else could gain admittance here, this entrance was meant only for you. I shall now go and close it.”

Franz Kafka, The Trial

The man never tries to enter the door, and instead waits for permission. The doorkeeper, however, told him that it was up to him if he wanted to enter or not, but he would’ve been met with resistance and had to fight for it. One interpretation might be that he chose to listen to a deceptive guard instead of himself. Another interpretation could be that it was not the man’s fault, his inhibition is a critique of bureaucracy, of the power of authorities, and of the estrangement of modern man. If he had got past the doorkeeper, he would have to face a second, and more powerful doorkeeper, and so on – ad infinitum. Whatever the interpretation might be, the man also saw an inextinguishable light emerging from the darkness of the door, signalling that there may be a glimmer of hope after all.

On the evening just before K’s thirty-first birthday, two men came to his room. K., who knew what time it was, did not fight back. He is taken to a quarry where he is cold-bloodedly murdered. His last words were: “Like a dog!” as if the shame were meant to outlive him.

The novel often appears nightmarish, surreal and dehumanising, while also being profoundly realistic. It is the prophecy of a dystopian or totalitarian society. The morning knock at the door that begins the terror throughout the whole novel stands for what lies in ambush for all of us in our daily lives. We are all on trial. It is the bureaucracy of terror and red tape which characterises so much of our 21^st century, and which Kafka is precisely the one to have defined.

The tone of the novel reads in a mechanical and monotone flatness, like a civil service bureaucrat’s report on some terrible hellish circumstances. Kafka wouldn’t have been able to write this novel if it wasn’t for his work as an insurance officer.

There is nothing that will make you a pessimist faster than interacting with the legal system.

The Castle (1926)

The Castle is Kafka’s last unfinished novel that was published posthumously in 1926. In the novel, the protagonist K., a land surveyor, is summoned by the castle to measure the land, but has no way of accessing it.

He arrives at a village, however, he is not permitted to stay there without a pass from the mysterious bureaucratic powers of the castle. He tries every single thing to try to contact the castle authorities who in fact summoned him, but it never works. He is informed that he was erroneously requested due to a miscommunication. Nobody knows what the castle officials do, their actions are never explained. The villagers hold the castle officials in high esteem, who maintain that their work and paperwork is flawless. Though the fact that they had summoned K. as a mistake clearly shows that they are lying and that there are faults in the system.

There are great similarities between The Castle and The Trial. Both highlight the struggle of the protagonist against a great bureaucratic system that no one has access to and that rules over everyone. The castle is the all-seeing eye that pierces through the social mask of your persona. Many interpret the castle as our search for God, including Max Brod. Ambiguity is the essence of Kafka’s work.

Conclusion

The Philosopher in Meditation – Rembrandt

In a parable, Kafka wrote:

“Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says: ‘Go over,’ he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labour were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something too that he cannot designate more precisely, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter.”

Kafka, On Parables

Kafka brings us back to reality and tells us that there may well be no magical place that we can go to, in order to look forward to life and be happier. He goes on to write:

“Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares.

Another said: I bet that is also a parable.

The first said: You have won.

The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.

The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost.”

Kafka, On Parables

In this parable on parables, or meta-parable, Kafka contemplates on the paradox of life, to want to believe in a “fabulous yonder” in contrast to the mundane existence of everyday life, but at the same time thinking that it’s incomprehensible or an inaccessible territory.

At the end of his life, Kafka became more spiritual. He wrote:

“Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible within himself, though both that indestructible something and his own trust in it may remain permanently concealed from him.”

Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

However dark Kafka’s work may seem, he champions the individual over the faceless bureaucracy. The lessons he teaches us is to be truthful, genuine, and ethical. Once one reads Kafka, one never really leaves him. A new door opens in one’s life to describe and refer to aspects in one’s daily life that could not find their proper expression.

“If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? … We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”

Franz Kafka, Letter to Oskar Pollak (27 January 1904)

The Dark World of Franz Kafka

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Based on the novel Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka – maxalimetov (DeviantArt)

Inner Gold – Alchemy and Psychology

Alchemy occupies a unique place in the collective psyche of humankind. We have spent millennia transitioning from instinct to reason, the culmination of which led to the Age of Enlightenment, a radical cultural shift.

Our ancestors, however, lived by instinctual impulse, rather than logical reasoning. We did not think about our actions, we simply acted them out. Thought forms, universally understandable gestures, and many attitudes follow a pattern that was established long before man developed a reflective consciousness. People don’t have ideas; ideas have people.

Table of contents

Introduction

It was Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Jung who recognised that in our increasingly rational and materialistic world, we were depriving ourselves from our inner world, the unconscious (which is the root of our being).

This does not mean that we must go back to a primitive way of life, but rather to acknowledge the one-sidedness of our modern rational mind, which only looks externally. We must reconnect with the unconscious. We can then inform our conscious and rational life, by creating a dialogue with the unconscious, through dreams, myths, symbols and rituals.

“The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 10: Civilisation in Transition

In his mid-50s, Jung discovered alchemy and devoted the remaining 30 years of his life to studying it, which he practically dug up from the dunghill of the past, for it was considered pseudoscience, a forgotten relic of history and despised field of investigation which he had suddenly revived.

However, alchemy was anything but pseudoscience. The alchemists sought to understand the nature of reality by using theories, experiments, and equipment. Thinking that alchemy is a pseudoscience is an anachronism, attributing modern ideas to older periods in history.

“Everything that the modern mind cannot define it regards as insane.”

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

Alchemy can be approached in different ways. The historians of science see it as the predecessor of chemistry, and strip off all the symbolic and mythical aspects. In fact, the name chemistry derives from alchemy (“al-chemistry”). Chemistry is the de-sacralisation of alchemy, and alchemy is the shadow of modern science. The focus here is on the chemical operations, discoveries and equipment. With their experiments, the alchemists created chemically pure substances to make glass, perfumes, paint, gunpowder, and more, as well as inventing the distillation of alcohol.

The historians of religion, on the other hand, focus on the historical rights, the myths and symbols connected with the alchemical works. One such person is the Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade, who has written about this in his book, The Forge and the Crucible.

Jung’s primary focus, however, was not as a historian, but rather viewing alchemy from a psychological perspective. He writes:

“[T]he rediscovery of the principles of alchemy came to be an important part of my work as a pioneer of psychology.”

Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols

In his 50s, Jung had developed most of what he is known for as founder of analytical psychology: psychological types, complexes, archetypes, synchronicity, the collective unconscious, the Self, individuation, and much more, which he had been studying and developing since his break with Freud. Now, his focus was to reinforce his ideas that the collective unconscious is a reality (which he observed in many of his patients) and that the Self develops through individuation, and he became interested in finding other sources as comparative material to his psychology. He called this the method of amplification, which allows one to “turn up the volume” of the unconscious material, by using alchemical, mythological, religious, and cultural parallels.

Jung eventually found the missing link, as he writes:

“But when I began to understand alchemy I realised that it represented the historical link with Gnosticism, and that a continuity therefore existed between past and present. 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.”

Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Jung found that many of the alchemical symbols were tackling the same thing he was grasping for in his earlier psychological work, and were strikingly similar to the dream images of many of his patients. He believed that the alchemical symbols were products of the collective unconscious that appeared to the tormented souls of the alchemists, who were precursors to his analytical psychology. Ancient alchemical texts provide us with a wealth of symbolic insight into the human mind and human behaviours that continue to be vitally relevant.

Jung was first introduced to alchemy when his friend Richard Wilhelm sent him a copy of the ancient Taoist alchemical book of life, The Secret of The Golden Flower. Jung realised that the Tao was a method for reuniting what has been separated, namely, consciousness and the unconscious, in order to reach psychic wholeness by a union of opposites, which Jung calls the Self. This is an alchemical idea that would occupy Jung for the rest of his life, culminating in his last great work Mysterium Coniunctionis.

At first, Jung hesitated to tackle alchemy, realising how much work it would involve. However, he came to the conclusion that it had to be done, for there was too much buried in the subject of alchemy which was important for a better understanding of ourselves. Jung first began with Eastern alchemy, but soon Western alchemy became his main focus.

Before delving into alchemy, we’ll first explore the idea of wholeness and the Self.

The Self: Achieving Wholeness

Castle Mandala (Image from Jung’s Red Book)

We are all born whole, but are fragmented as we gain a sense of “I”. This is known as the ego-Self axis, where the first half of life is ego-Self separation, and the second half of life is ego-Self reunion. There is a line connecting the ego with the Self, like a channel. Jung writes:

“The self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness.”

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

When the ego becomes the sole source of identity in our life, we disregard the other half of our personality, the unconscious, resulting in one-sidedness and psychic dissociation. Our task is to recover our original unity that we had as infants, before developing the ego. This is known as original wholeness, the original self.

To become like a child is not a regression, but a recovery of unity. Although it can also take on a negative form if one seeks the protecting circle of the mother and does not want to take responsibility to become independent, this is seen in the so-called “man-child” who has never “grown up”.

We all have an archetypal inner child in us, even as we age (the idea of puer aeternus or eternal youth), integrating this archetype in our adulthood can be highly beneficial. For Nietzsche, the child is the final metamorphosis to becoming who we truly are.

“The child is innocence and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelling wheel, a first motion, a sacred Yes.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Play is an essential part of our life and it is sadly put at the background when we grow up and develop our ego, though we unconsciously long for it. Children project meaning into objects and live in animism, where objects are animated into living forms. The subject is more connected with objects. Jung writes:

“The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 6: Psychological Types

Integrating our inner child leads to a heightened state of consciousness, which we did not possess when we were born. We are born integrated, disintegrate, and must re-integrate, that is the process of self-realisation. There is no integration without disintegration.

Wholeness is achieved through constant inner work:

“Only after one hundred days of consistent work, only then is the light genuine; only then can one begin to work with the spirit-fire.”

Lü Dongbin, The Secret of the Golden Flower

Light is an acute state of consciousness that uncovers areas of the unconscious which are usually covered. Jung writes:

“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.”

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

To become whole is not a linear process, but rather of circumambulation, a process in which everything relates to the centre. Jung wrote:

“I began to understand that the goal of psychic development is the self. There is no linear evolution; there is only a circumambulation of the self… This insight gave me stability, and gradually my inner peace returned. I knew that in finding the mandala as an expression of the self I had achieved what was for me the ultimate. Perhaps someone else knows more, but not I.”

Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections

To be in the centre is to be relieved from anxiety, suffering and hopelessness, which are the aspects of the rim of the circle, the temporal (money, pleasure, fame, power, etc.). A medieval manuscript portrays a king who lives on the rim of the wheel, which moves in a never-ending process of: “I am reigning”, “I have reigned”, “I have lost my kingdom”, and “I shall reign”. In the centre is the figure of Christ, a symbol for the Self. To be in the centre is to experience ecstasy, standing outside of oneself without ceasing to be oneself.

The Ancient Greek Philosophers called this the state of apatheia (not to be confused with apathetic), it is a state of wisdom and tranquillity, of being undisturbed by one’s wild emotional fluctuations, of being indifferent to what happens to you in life, and going along with whatever life throws at you. By observing what actually happens, instead of our perception of what happens, it allows to calm our inner tornado and earthly passions. The Stoics practiced what is known as the dichotomy of control: to focus on what is in your control, and not on that which is out of your control.

Apathetia is not, however, a permanent state – that would be a superhuman feat, it is rather a temporary state in people who are more in tune with their soul, which for Jung is the alignment of one’s ego to the Self, the source of spiritual nourishment. This is characteristic of the archetype of the wise old man and woman. Others are more affected by anxiety and suffering, because they live on the rim of the wheel or the ego, where life becomes a vicious cycle.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul. To be alone with oneself can lead to solitariness in the positive or loneliness in the negative.

“If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”

Jean-Paul Sartre, Essays in Aesthetics

Spending some time alone with oneself and one’s unconscious can be a rich source of spiritual nourishment and is key to self-realisation. It is only by confronting our unconscious that we can become whole. Jung writes:

“As a doctor it is my task to help the patient to cope with life. I cannot presume to pass judgment on his final decisions, because I know from experience that all coercion – be it suggestion, insinuation, or any other method of persuasion – ultimately proves to be nothing but an obstacle to the highest and most decisive experience of all, which is to be alone with his own self, or whatever else one chooses to call the objectivity of the psyche. The patient must be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself. Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation.”

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

Now that we have a basic notion of the idea of wholeness, we’ll start with the origins and history of alchemy.

The Origins and History of Alchemy

The etymology of alchemy is of uncertain origin. It is said to derive from the Arabic al-kīmiyā (al being the prefix for “the”), the word comes from the old name for Egypt (Kemet) meaning the black lands, the fertile soils along the Nile River, as distinct from the “red lands” of the desert. Therefore, alchemy can be seen as the Egyptian art or the black art. Others believe the Arabic word derives from the Greek word khymeia, meaning “to cast together”, or “to pour together”. The term alchemy may well be a mix of these different sources.

It is unclear where alchemy first appeared, if it was Egypt, China, India or some place in the Middle East, or if it happened in various places at the same time. Many of them exchanged their different beliefs, practices and knowledge along the Silk Road, which was also an intellectual route. According to many scholars, however, alchemy can be traced back to Egypt.

The Pre-Socratic and Ancient Greek philosophers dealt primarily with rational thought and natural principles to understand the world, and did few or no experiments. They came up with the basic concepts still valid in modern physics: the concepts of matter, space, time, and the atom, and many of them sought to understand the world through one of the four elements: fire, water, air, and earth.

The Egyptians, on the other hand, mainly dealt with matter, and while they had religious ideas, they did not possess the philosophical basis that the Greeks had. An enormous amount of the Egyptians’ energy was directed to life after death, and their main concern was that the right kinds of rituals be performed so that eternal life after death would be assured in the right way.

The distinction between matter and spirit was not made by the Egyptians. If you were going to have eternal life, you needed a body that would live forever. That was the purpose of mummification. The main chemical procedure consisted in bathing the corpse in a base of sodium bicarbonate. The root of the Latin word natrium (sodium) is the Egyptian word ntr, meaning “god”. Mummification meant bathing the corpse in “god substance”, till it was completely soaked in it. As such, one became eternal and identical with the cosmos.

The trends of Greek and Egyptian civilisation came together and united in a very fruitful marriage, of which alchemy was their child. As such, alchemy was born as a hybrid of Greek philosophy and Egyptian material transformation and symbolism.

The central figure in alchemy is Hermes Trismegistus (or Thrice-Great Hermes), whose name is derived from the ancient Egyptian God Thoth, and his Greek counterpart Hermes, the messenger of the Gods and psychopomp. The philosophy of Hermes is known as Hermeticism, and he is the author of the Emerald Tablet, which is supposed to contain all the knowledge of the philosophy and practice of alchemy, in just a few lines. It is the source of perhaps the most important alchemical maxim: “as above, so below.” The inner world (microcosm) and outer world (macrocosm), are one and the same: as within, so without. The immortal and eternal realm of the inner world corresponds to the physical and mortal reality of the outer world that we all experience. Through transforming ourselves, we transform the world; through transforming the world, we transform ourselves. Human consciousness expands and embraces cosmic consciousness. The drop returns to the ocean, and the spark to the flame.

In his book, Jung and the Alchemical Imagination, Jeffrey Raff divides the history of alchemy into three main phases: Hellenistic alchemy, from 200 B.C. to A.D. 600; Arabic alchemy, extending to about A.D. 1000; and Latin alchemy, continuing from about 1100 to 1700. The history of alchemy went through its own process of death and rebirth.

The alchemist Zosimos wrote about Maria Prophetissa, which some scholars consider as one of the founders of alchemy. They both lived in the Middle East, around A.D. 200 or 300.

Alchemy sought to uncover the mystery of matter. By transforming matter, one transformed the spirit. For instance, having a good physical health was important, because it corresponds to good mental health, and so on.

By A.D. 600, alchemy started dying out as a spiritual discipline. It would later be revived in the Muslim conquests when the Arabs discovered the Greek and Egyptian alchemical texts, and continued the tradition. The most interested in alchemy were the Sufis, who wrote about imagination, the power of the mind, and visionary states. Jabir Ibn Hayyan is regarded as the most famous of the Arab alchemists, who is supposed to have died around A.D. 800.

Alchemy again started to fade away, until another war happened. This time it was the Crusades. The Crusaders discovered the Greek texts that the Arabs had taken and brought it back to Europe, this started the Latin period of alchemy. One of the most famous alchemists of this period was Paracelsus, who was more concerned with the medical and practical side of alchemy. He was also interested in the creation of the homunculus, the representation of an artificial small human being.

Around the 1700s, the scientific method was born, and alchemy was branded as fraudulent, nonsense, and heresy. People began to focus on the backwardness and superstition of the past, and the Enlightenment and rationalist world of modernity. However, one of the greatest scientists, Isaac Newton, continued to study alchemy for the rest of his life, and produced around a million words in alchemical works. After his death, most of it was burned, for fear of ruining his reputation. It wasn’t until the 20^th century, that Jung brought alchemy back to life as psychology.

The Basics Concepts of Alchemy

Alchemy is popularly known as the art of transmutation, most notably, turning lead into gold. This process is known as chrysopoeia (gold-making). Lead was often associated as the basest of metals, it’s dull, soft, quite useless for making tools, and poisonous.

There are seven primary metals in alchemy, which have seven planetary influences: gold (Sun), silver (Moon), copper (Venus), iron (Mars), tin (Jupiter), mercury (Mercury) and lead (Saturn). For the Hindus, these also correspond to the seven chakras in the body.

If the alchemists were ever able to produce artificial gold is unknown. It seemed to be the goal of the alchemists and composed thousands of years of earnest behaviour. For Jung, however, the task was and has always been psychological. The end product is not material in nature, but rather spiritual. Alchemy is the art of expanding consciousness, of self-realisation.

“There is in natural things a certain truth which cannot be seen with the outward eye, but is perceived by the mind alone, and of this the Philosophers have had experience, and have ascertained that its virtue is such as to work miracles… Transform yourselves from dead stones into living philosophical stones!”

Gerhard Dorn, Theatrum Chemicum

The spiritual alchemist conceals the truth intentionally, so as to prevent wicked people or charlatans overcome by greed and material possession to access its wisdom. There were many dilettante alchemists who failed to understand the spiritual and psychological nature of alchemy as inner transformation. Moreover, concealing the truth helped shield them from the persecution of religious fanatics, as it was considered heretical and would result in a death sentence.

Alchemists were not only concerned with lead, but also transforming the lowest kind of matter one can think of: rotten flesh, urine, poison, faeces, etc., into the expression of the highest kind of matter: gold. This is known as base matter or prima materia (first matter), which is the one thing that makes up everything in the universe and is the source of life. There are hundreds of different suggestions for this elusive substance. Psychologically, it can be defined as our very consciousness.

A famous alchemical saying is, in sterquilinis invenitur (in filth it will be found). That which you most value in life is found in the least likely places. Many alchemical works are difficult and seemingly impenetrable, it is like navigating through a maze, but sometimes you stumble upon a gem.

The prima materia expresses itself in a trinity. These are known as the tria prima, which the alchemists gave code names to: sulphur (soul) mercury (spirit) and salt (body). These compose everything in the world.

The process of transforming matter would always go through these three principles. In the alchemical art of spagyrics (which means to separate and recombine), the alchemist would transform plants and herbs into oil by distillation, creating essential oils (the soul). In the process of fermentation, they would create liquor (the spirit), which is why we call alcohol spirits. And the destruction of the plant by fire would create an ash, which when washed with water, filtered and evaporated, would leave salt crystals (the body). This shows us that the alchemists really thought seriously about the connection between the inner world and the outer world.

The alchemists saw the body as all the objects and material that compose reality. However, these are mere concepts or ideas. Physical reality isn’t really as solid as we perceive it to be. The world can take on a whole new appearance depending on our perception of it. This is a reflection of the spirit, which is the mind. And the soul is the cause of everything that is.

The spirit is the bridge that joins body and soul, represented by Mercury, the Roman version of Hermes, who is also related to Thoth, they are all the same archetype. In short, alchemy is the understanding of how the unconscious (the spirit) relates to consciousness (the body), which for Jung represents one’s total personality, the Self (the soul).

To understand the nature of reality, one must understand the prima materia. By breaking it into its component parts, the alchemist would then reunite the parts in such a way as to create a new substance, by changing the different elements (fire, water, air and earth), and qualities (hot, cold, dry, and moist). This is an important principle in alchemy, known as solve et coagula, a process of breaking down to separate and reunite, which is identical to the meaning of spagyrics.

The goal of transforming the prima materia is to create the lapis philosophorum (the philosophers’ stone), which is the central symbol of alchemy. It is the substance that acts as an intermediary catalyst, and by mixing it, turns base matter into gold. Obtaining the stone is part of what is called the Opus Magnum (the Great Work) of the alchemists. The alchemists believe that the opus proceeds from the one and leads back to the one. This is expressed in the famous axiom of Maria, a recurring theme in alchemy and symbol for wholeness, which Jung quotes:

“One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth.”

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

This is the essence of the philosophers’ stone, whose symbol is the squared circle. In the image, we can see all the principles of alchemy take place. The outer circle is a representation of the soul, whose possibilities are unlimited and infinite. Within the circle, is a triangle: the tria prima. Then we have a square, which symbolises the four elements. When all these are brought together, we get once again the circle of the soul. This can be repeated in an infinite regression, and is what comprises the philosophers’ stone.

The stone is sometimes described as capable of producing the universal panacea (which cures the diseases and sufferings of humanity), the alkahest or universal solvent (capable of dissolving any substance without destroying its fundamental component), the holy grail (which grants eternal youth) and the elixir of life (which grants immortality, and was of interest primarily to the Chinese alchemists). Ironically, many Chinese emperors seeking to prolong their lifespans died from drinking elixirs. These ideas are to be taken as inner work, there are no shortcuts for self-realisation.

It was our desire for truth and enlightenment of our nature that motivated us to seek through every means possible for that certain something that we unconsciously felt we had lost and which is ours to reacquire.

For Jung, the philosophers’ stone is to be found in ourselves, it is the old adage, “know thyself”.

“The alchemical stone (the lapis) symbolises something that can never be lost or dissolved, something eternal that some alchemists compared to the mystical experience of God within one’s own soul. It usually takes prolonged suffering to burn away all the superfluous psychic elements concealing the stone. But some profound inner experience of the Self does occur to most people at least once in a lifetime. From the psychological standpoint, a genuinely religious attitude consists of an effort to discover this unique experience, and gradually to keep in tune with it (it is relevant that a stone is itself something permanent), so that the Self becomes an inner partner toward whom one’s attention is continually turned.”

Man and His Symbols, Part 3: The Process of Individuation – M.L. von Franz

Alchemy as Psychological Projection

The Green Lion Devouring the Sun (D. Stolcius von Stolcenberg, Viridarium chymicum)

The psychological significance of alchemy comes from psychological projection. Projection is never made, it happens, it is simply there. In the darkness of anything external to what we find, there is an interior or psychic life that is our own. Jung believes that since it was a question of projection, the alchemist was naturally unconscious of the fact that the experience had nothing to do with matter itself. He experienced his projection as a property of matter; but what he was in reality experiencing was his unconscious.

“This was a time when the mind of the alchemist was still grappling with the problems of matter, when the exploring consciousness was confronted by the dark void of the unknown, in which figures and laws were dimly perceived and attributed to matter although they really belonged to the psyche. Everything unknown and empty is filled with psychological projection; it is as if the investigator’s own psychic background were mirrored in the darkness. What he sees in matter, or thinks he can see, is chiefly the data of his own unconscious which he is projecting into it. In other words, he encounters in matter, as apparently belonging to it, certain qualities and potential meanings of whose psychic nature he is entirely unconscious.”

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

This procedure was not, of course, intentional; it was an involuntary occurrence. There is a psychical existence which precedes consciousness. From time to time, we get messages from this realm through dreams, fantasies, intuitions, visions, and so on; and it is from these that we draw the conclusion of a psychical existence in ourselves which is totally different to our conscious mind.

Thus, there exists in alchemy an astonishing amount of material from the unconscious, produced in a situation where the conscious mind did not follow a definite program, but only searched. This is an important point. The conclusions are spontaneous, in contrast to other symbolic material which have always been revised. Alchemy contains a collection of archetypal symbols with a minimum of personification.

The dynamic depictions of the subjective transformative process occurring in individuals not only provided confirmation and validation of Jung’s own concepts, but he found that they provided a rich lexicon for understanding the dreams of his patients and a host of cultural phenomena.

To become who we are, requires a reconnection with the instincts, with the unconscious and the mythic world. And at the same time, maintaining a strong ego to differentiate between one’s daily life and the archetypes of the collective unconscious. One must know the difference to apply rational thinking and ethical behaviour to the products of the unconscious without being overwhelmed by them or kowtowing to them, but also without ignoring them and treating them as if they were meaningless.

When one closes oneself completely from the unconscious, one also closes oneself from the energy that come from these symbols. This can lead to alienation and depression.

The Importance of Symbols

Meditation, prayer, dreams, etc., are all healing processes that allows us to reintegrate our fragmented selves, align ourselves and be at harmony with ourselves. This cannot be done by logical reasoning, it is a participatory and existential mode of being.

“The union of opposites on a higher level of consciousness is not a rational thing, nor is it a matter of will; it is a process of psychic development that expresses itself in symbols.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 13: Alchemical Studies

The way to lure the unconscious into consciousness is by interacting with symbols, which are the language of the unconscious. We are constantly surrounded by symbols in our daily life, this has been so since time immemorial. And though we are less aware of them than our ancestors (because we have created an artificial environment and lifestyle that in many cases goes against our instinctual impulses), they are still very much alive in our unconscious, and play an important role in our lives.

Searching for symbols is like fishing in the ocean of the unconscious. Carrying too many will make your boat sink, this represents ego inflation and hubris, but carrying no symbols at all will make you feel empty, and without energy, life appears without any colour, life becomes meaningless. Like a fisherman that returns home after a long day without fish, the soul remains “hungry”. Jung developed his own technique to engage with symbols, which he called active imagination.

“The unconscious has a thousand ways of snuffing out a meaningless existence with surprising swiftness.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 14: Mysterium Coniunctionis

The work of the alchemists is filled with symbols. Such as the ouroboros (the tail-devourer), which depicts a snake or dragon eating its tail. It is thought to be the oldest allegorical symbol in alchemy, which appears in Cleopatra the Alchemist’s Chrysopoeia, symbolising the concept of eternity and endless return, associated with the maxim ‘One is All, and All is One’.

Sometimes an alchemist would be initiated by a teacher, who would deliberately confuse the student. They would not tell you what they really meant, because they wanted you to figure it out for yourself. If the teacher told all his secrets to his student, there would be no inner work, only a detached transmission of knowledge without any transformation in the individual. One must work with the material until one comes upon a realisation that impacts one’s life.

Gold is the highest value in consciousness, the realisation of the Self. To reach that state, however, we must first disintegrate our ego-consciousness. The one becomes the many, like all those figures appearing above the head of the meditator in the Taoist alchemical book of life that introduced Jung to alchemy.

Everybody is a multiple personality, not in the pathological sense of that term, but insofar as we all have living personalities besides our ego personality. These are the archetypes of the collective unconscious and are autonomous. You can see them in your dream figures, which most of the time (but not always) represent different parts of yourself (not other people). This seems quite bizarre for us when we think about it, as it is completely contrary to our normal everyday life. The Ancient Greek Philosophers called it a daimon (not to be confused with demon), an inner voice, guardian spirit, tutelary figure, angel, or higher self who watches over each individual.

The Operations of Alchemy

Emblem 2 from Philosophia Reformata – Johann Daniel Mylius

So, how does one practice alchemy? There are a number of operations for achieving the philosophers’ stone, though there was no general agreement of how many or which ones they were. There were, however, several steps that occur most frequently in alchemical texts. In his book Anatomy of the Psyche, Edward Edinger distinguishes between seven operations as the major ones that make up the alchemical transformation, and uses their Latin terms to differentiate the psychological processes from the chemical procedures. These are: calcinatio, solutio, coagulatio, sublimatio, mortificatio, separatio and coniunctio.

It may look like a linear process, but it is not. It is akin to Jung’s notion of circumambulation, where one or more operations may repeat themselves. The different operations are steps towards individuation.

Fire is a central symbol in alchemy. Alchemy is the art of fire, and the alchemists, philosophers by fire. The first operation is calcinatio, the process of burning a substance until it is reduced to fine ash.

When the soul is burned up with fire, it is lustful, jealous, frustrated or angry. Fire is active, energetic and instinctual. It is different from the coldness of intense sadness, which is passive, contemplative and lethargic. Fire, however, is also a process of catharsis. It is the destruction of the ego and material possessions, a natural humbling process as we are gradually assaulted and overcome by the trials and tribulations of life.

Heraclitus considered fire to be the first principle from whence all things owe their existence. Fuelling the flame of the heart with daily devotions of right action, right thought, right speech, meditation and prayer; increases the power, wisdom, and love of the divine nature of man.

“The fire and the rose are one… We are pleased to the depth of our soul to be told that the fire of transformation and the flower of rebirth are one and the same.”

Robert A. Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow

The expression, “God is a consuming fire” is well-known in holy scriptures. The seraphim (“burning ones”) are fiery celestial beings that fly around God crying “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty!” Fire burns away all our errors and lies, only truth survives the fire.

The second operation in alchemy is solutio. While calcinatio symbolises fire, solutio pertains to water. Some texts consider it the root of alchemy. It is the process of turning a solid into a liquid. It is a further dissolution of the ego and immersion in the dark depths of the ocean, the unconscious.

The third operation is coagulatio, which represents earth, turning liquid back to a solid. It takes on a fixed, heavy and permanent shape. It is the fall from spirit to flesh, from heaven to earth. For something to have become earth means that it has been concretised in a particular form, it has become attached to an ego. Exposing oneself to daily life, and hard work – solidifies one’s personality. Jung wrote:

“I have done without electricity, and tend the fireplace and stove myself. Evenings, I light the old lamps. There is no running water, and I pump the water from the well. I chop the wood and cook the food. These simple acts make man simple; and how difficult it is to be simple!”

Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections

It is important to have a strong anchor in reality when interacting with the unconscious, and to not get lost in abstract thinking, to the detriment of practical life, which leads to depression and melancholy. Actions speak louder than words. Additionally, when one takes responsibility by making one’s unconscious contents conscious, one is headed towards self-realisation.

The word humility comes from the Latin word humus, which means earth. A humble person is down-to-earth. Human is derived from the same word, one who is grounded. Humility contains a rich source of nutrients, which heals us.

The fourth operation is sublimatio, pertaining to air. It turns the material into vapor, which arises from the top of the alchemical vessel and was seen as spirit, in contrast to the material. The reunion of the body with the spirit is an elevating process where a low substance is translated into a higher form by an ascending movement. It is like breathing pure mountain air after a difficult ascent. When we have a problem and look at it from “above”, many times it ceases to be a problem, as we gain psychic objectivity. Sublimatio is associated with ladders, stairs, clouds, chariots, etc.

The process is liberating but also dangerous, as it may leave one to unbearable heights, it can be disastrous to be stuck in the sky. A young man recalls several dreams he had:

“I once dreamed that I had climbed a ladder to a high platform, and that then somebody removed the ladder so that I was left stranded on the height with no way of getting down again. Another time I was climbing a ladder miles above the earth’s surface with something impelling me onward. I dared not to look down for fear of becoming dizzy and letting go of the rung.”

Edward Edinger, Anatomy of the Psyche

One needs an ascent as much as a descent. This is the paradox. Nietzsche expresses this beautifully:

“Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman – a rope over an abyss. A dangerous going-across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and staying-still. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

As an alchemical dictum says, “sublimate the body and coagulate the spirit.” Upward movement eternalises, downward movement personalises. This process is expressed in the Emerald Tablet, which refers to the one principle of alchemy:

“It ascends from the earth to the heaven, and descends again to the earth, and receives the power of the above and below. Thus you will have the glory of the whole world. Therefore all darkness will flee from you.”

Hermes Trismegistus, The Emerald Tablet

Our happiness should not be based upon something that is illusory, the less earthly desires one has, the richer one truly becomes. Illusions bind us to a false sense of human limitation, and enslave us by seducing us to indulge in things that hampers the development of the soul.

Stages of Alchemy: Nigredo, Albedo, Rubedo

Emblem 8 from Atalanta Fugiens – Michael Maier

The rest of the operations take on a different form than the four elements. During the process of transformation of matter, the alchemists would see different stages or changes of colour take place: the nigredo (blackening), albedo (whitening), citrinitas (yellowing), and rubedo (reddening).

After the 15^th century, however, the colours were reduced to three, and yellow fell in disuse or was seldom mentioned, as it merged with the final stage.

The nigredo is a spiritual death. It is only by having the courage to let go of one’s old ideas and limitations that are blocking one’s development, that one may open the door to new insight, transforming into a new self. As Nietzsche wrote:

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well as the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions, they cease to be mind.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak §573

The guide for this insight is not just the experience gathered in life, but also listening to the unconscious, which is our ultimate guide in life. The subject must be open and aware of his or her unconscious and approach it in an honest manner.

The nigredo represents the fifth alchemical operation, mortificatio. We can observe this process in nature, such as the decomposition of bodies, the falling of leaves, the rotting down of fruits, etc., where nutrients are recycled back to the earth. The idea of something turning black is matter beginning to die and rot (putrefactio). The nigredo is seen as the most negative of the operations, and often referred to as a “black blacker than black”, a place without light. It is the dark night of the soul. The process is a purging of the horrible darkness of our mind.

This stage is represented by the raven, and includes death, suffering, grief, depression, loneliness, weariness of life, and suicide. It is seen in those who experience a crisis of meaning in life, who feel as they are swallowed up by the ground, and the only way out is to begin their inner work. The state of horror, however, is so unbearable that we reach for anything to shut it down, and so we numb ourselves with pleasure.

When we begin to feel uncomfortable and aware that something is not right, but we do not know what it is – we are in a state of massa confusa, of inner chaos. It is the voice of the unlived life. If we pay attention to this, we begin to see things we don’t like to see in ourselves, but which can be very valuable. In this state, one should ask oneself, what is the next right thing that I can actually do, apart from nothing? The nigredo is a moment of maximum despair, that is a prerequisite to change and transformation. It is a process of separating the wheat from the chaff.

“When you come to that loneliness with yourself – when you are eternally alone – you are forced in upon yourself and are bound to become aware of your background.”

Carl Jung, Visions: Notes of Seminars

The gateway to peace is narrow, and none may enter save through affliction of the soul. For Jung, the nigredo is the confrontation with one’s shadow and unconscious material. He writes:

“Self-knowledge is an adventure that carries us unexpectedly far and deep. Even a moderately comprehensive knowledge of the shadow can cause a good deal of confusion and mental darkness, since it gives rise to personality problems which one had never remotely imagined before. For this reason alone we can understand why the alchemists called their nigredo melancholia, ‘a black blacker than black.’ ”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 14: Mysterium Coniunctionis

At the height of despair and darkness, however, is where suddenly an illumination comes from above.

“There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection. To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this the “thorn in the flesh” is needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent.”

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

It is the archetype of the wounded healer, to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery. This is a healing process, Jung calls this process enantiodromia, the union of the opposites.

“The greater the tension, the greater is the potential. Great energy springs from a correspondingly great tension of opposites.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 13: Alchemical Studies

Before the second stage, the albedo – there is a transitionary phase called the cauda pavonis (the peacock’s tail) in which many colours appear. The albedo is the washing away of impurities, a baptism, represented by the dove. This leads to the sixth step, the separatio, the awareness of the opposites, of nigredo and albedo. At this point the first main goal of the process is reached, the albedo is highly prized by many alchemists as if it were the ultimate goal. It is the female or moon condition, which allows one to create silver.

However, some subjected the white matter into another death, turning black once more. If successful, it would lead to the final stage, the rubedo. The colour red is associated with the sun, gold, and the philosopher’s stone, putting an end to the great work.

“Seek the coldness of the moon and ye shall find the heat of the sun.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 14: Mysterium Coniunctionis

This is the awakening, where the phoenix rises and is reborn from the fire. We stop fearing the darkness, once we know the phoenix in us will rise from the ashes.

“Only that which can destroy itself is truly alive.”

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

The red and the white are King and Queen, the Sun and the Moon, who at this stage, may celebrate the hieros gamos (holy marriage), leading to the final stage, the coniunctio. This step was particularly important for Jung, and represents the reunification of the prima materia, creating the philosophers’ stone. It is the wholeness of the hermaphroditic Mercurius, the contrasexual soul images (anima and animus), the union of opposites that restores one to the Self. Jung writes:

“Mercurius stands at the beginning and end of the work: he is the prima materia, the caput corvi [raven’s head], the nigredo; as dragon he devours himself and as dragon he dies, to rise again as the lapis. He is the play of colour in the cauda pavonis and the division into four elements. He is the hermaphrodite that was in the beginning, that splits into the classical brother-sister duality and is reunited in the coniunctio, to appear once again at the end in the radiant form of the lumen novum [new light], the stone. He is metallic yet liquid, matter yet spirit, cold yet fiery, poison and yet healing draught – a symbol uniting all the opposites.”

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

Conclusion

Cabala, Spiegel Der Kunst Und Natur – Steffan Michelspacher

Alchemy is a process of spiritual death and rebirth. Death is the end or the transition to a new experience. It is the Hero’s Journey which we all partake in. The call to adventure that leads to a confrontation with our dragon (our worst fear, event, person or memory long avoided), a difficult quest that may require many attempts to complete. The reward is accessing the treasure chest of our inner gold, that is, the psychological death of our old self and the birth of a new and more capable self, with an elixir to share the experience with others. The end of the alchemical work was conceived as self-knowledge.

Alchemy seeks to heal the suffering of the human mind, of the human soul. A true alchemist seizes the black matter of all existence and makes it something luminous. For this spiritual knowledge to be valuable, it must be put into practice.

To summarise, we have: calcinatio (fire), solutio (water), coagulatio (earth), sublimatio (air), and then mortificatio and separatio (nigredo and albedo), and finally coniunctio (rubedo).

It should be reiterated that this is one of many different interpretations of the alchemical process, and should not be taken as the definite one. This should, however, serve as a solid introduction to the alchemical work.

In the mountain of the adepts, we see that the process of psychological development is analogous to the stages in the alchemical transformation of base matter into gold. The philosopher’s stone here is represented as a “temple of the wise” buried in the earth. The phoenix, symbol of the renewed personality, straddles the sun and moon (the opposites as masculine and feminine). The zodiac in the background symbolises the duration of the process; the four elements indicate wholeness. The blindfolded man represents the stumbling search for truth; the right way is shown by the investigator prepared to follow his natural instincts.

“An old alchemist gave the following consolation to one of his disciples: No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you.”

C.G. Jung, Letters, Vol. II

Inner Gold – Alchemy and Psychology

Alchemy occupies a unique place in the collective psyche of humankind. Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Jung discovered alchemy and devoted the remaining 30 years of his life to studying it, which he practically dug up from the dunghill of the past, for it was considered pseudoscience, a forgotten relic of history and despised field of investigation which he had suddenly revived.

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Artwork used in the video

19th century engraving of Wagner and Homunculus from Goethe’s Faust II

The Psychology of Projection

Projection is a psychological fact that can be observed everywhere in the everyday life of human beings, whether you are having a conversation and someone tells you that you are projecting, or the first impressions you have of a particular person that turned out to be wrong.

In our ideas of other people and situations, we are often liable to make misjudgements that we later have to correct, having acquired better insight. In such cases, most people acknowledge their mistake and let the matter drop, without bothering to ask themselves where the false judgement or the incorrect idea came from.

However, to really know who we are, we must concern ourselves with correcting such misjudgements. Many people will cling to them with every fibre of their being, because if one accepts correction, one may fall into a depression.

Psychological projection was conceptualised by Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, as an unconscious mechanism where one ascribes one’s own motivations, thoughts, feelings, and desires that are unacceptable to oneself, while attributing them to others. It is a misalignment of the inner and outer world, because what one is inwardly, one will see outwardly.

When we experience betrayal, abuse, discomfort, etc., we might very well be distrustful of others. This is a defence mechanism, a projection from one’s psychological history.

When we find certain unacceptable feelings, thoughts or behaviours in ourselves that we refuse to acknowledge, and see someone with that specific trait, we will feel resentment, hatred and anger towards them. Projection occurs not because of what other people say to you, but rather because of what you yourself think about those people.

A person with a strong “self-concept” (the knowledge of who one is) makes one feel good about who they are. Negative projection is more likely to occur in people with a low self-image and low self-esteem. The real self that always tends towards an ideal self, turns into a despised self.

Table of contents

Example of Projection

For example, a man is afraid to voice his opinion in important matters related to his job, because he does not like conflicts, he is too shy, insecure and prefers to remain passive and just do his work quietly. His co-worker, however, is assertive and makes his opinions heard in every meeting, though the shy person believes he has much better opinions. This results overtime in his co-worker getting a promotion and a raise.

Once he returns home, he will feel hatred against himself, and project it onto his co-worker, who has the qualities that he wants to possess. By pointing our finger to other people, we help to reduce the discomfort, anxiety or bad feelings about ourselves, and avoid taking responsibility to implement these good qualities in ourselves, because it is too painful, difficult or uncomfortable. When you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back at you.

In this way, we deny that the bad qualities are ours and attribute them to others. We judge, attack or blame them. This can be extended to whole groups of people with specific ideas. One who lives through projection is convinced that it is others who have all the bad qualities and who practise all the vices. Therefore, it is they who are wrong and they who must be fought against. When one thinks everything is someone else’s fault, one will suffer a lot.

Projection occurs on an unconscious level, it is unperceived and unintentional. Projections are like an icicle, they return to us, we do not remain unpunished when we project. However, we must bear in mind that we do not make projections, rather they happen to us. It is easier to see someone else projecting than seeing yourself as projecting. They are unconscious in nature, and in the moment that you are conscious of projecting, you are already out of its influence.

To make the unconscious contents conscious, which includes the withdrawal of projections, represents an important psychological task, that allows for an increase in consciousness, and an advance in self-realisation.

It is not unusual to justify one’s projection by inventing a rationale. For instance, the person caught buying on the “black market” says in self-justification, “everybody else is doing it.” Here, the attempt is to convert neurotic anxiety about doing something wrong into objective anxiety about not getting enough to eat.

Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz writes:

“If a son, for example, experiences his father as tyrannical, in later life he will, in many cases, not only project the quality of tyranny onto authority figures and father figures, such as his doctor, his superiors, and the state, but he will also behave just as tyrannically himself – though unconsciously.”

M.L. von Franz, Projection and Re-collection in Jungian Psychology

If an anti-authoritarian person has to deal with someone who shows even relatively slight manifestations of self-assertiveness or power, the image of the tyrant lying dormant in him will immediately attach itself to the other person. The projection has taken place. The projector is utterly convinced that he has to deal with a tyrant, a mistake of judgment of this kind can only be corrected with the greatest difficulty.

It is not only a person’s negative conscious qualities that are projected outward in this way, but in equal measure, his positive ones. The projection of the latter then brings about an excessive delusory, inappropriate evaluation and admiration of the object. It is possible for a person to infect others with his paranoid idea and for a sizeable group to take up the erroneous judgment, until another group finally sets the matter straight. Witch hunts as examples of negative projections or the veneration of a dictator as a saviour-hero as an example of positive projections, are witnesses to the existence of the phenomenon of collective contagion. Whole groups can project collectively, so that their mistake in judgment passes officially for the acceptable description of reality.

Freud: Mother Complex and Transference

Freud believed that the true and false impressions received by a child in his earliest experiences of his parents and siblings, play a role in later projections. For example, a child who has experienced his father or mother in a specifically negative form, tends to project the same father or mother image onto older men or women he meets in later life.

A mother complex is an active component in everyone’s psyche, which includes one’s personal mother, contact with other women and by collective assumptions. A negative mother complex makes it impossible to have an unprejudiced experience of other people. Such a negative reaction lives on, stored up in the depths of the psyche, and is projected onto others at a suitable opportunity.

Another important phenomenon that Freud conceptualised is transference, where a person unconsciously projects the feelings for another person to an entirely different person. The difference from projection is that transference requires three people. For example, transferring feelings about one’s parents to one’s partner or mistrusting somebody who resembles an ex-spouse in manners, voice, or external appearance. This is a typical phenomenon in therapy, and one the analyst must be aware of, lest he engages in counter-transference, which may harm the relationship between analyst and analysand.

Carl Jung on Projection

Many suffer from the fact that they do not take into consideration the manifestations of the unconscious in human beings. Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, writes that:

“A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 13: Alchemical Studies

The same unconscious from which projections emanate, also strives, in certain phases of inner development, to correct them, through dreams or active imagination. Thus, in addition to the common sense judgment of the collectivity, there is an inner factor in the individual himself that tends to correct his image of reality from time to time.

“What Freud calls ‘the dream façade’ is the dream’s obscurity, and this is really only a projection of our own lack of understanding. We say that the dream has a false front only because we fail to see into it.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 16: Practice of Psychotherapy

Unless we are possessed of an unusual degree of self-awareness, we shall never see through our projections, but must always succumb to them. Because the mind, in its natural state, presupposes the existence of such projections.

Jung further elaborated the idea of projection in terms of the concept of the shadow and the anima and animus.

Jung: Shadow Projection

The shadow plays a crucial role in projection, both personally and collectively. I have talked about this concept more in-depth in another video.

As we repress the things we despise in ourselves and refuse to acknowledge them, they remain buried in the psyche and form the shadow, which is essentially what one has no wish to be. We then project like puppets pulled by the strings of the unconscious. Jung writes:

“The effect of projection is to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a real relation to it there is now only an illusory one. Projections change the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face. In the last analysis, therefore, they lead to an autoerotic or autistic condition in which one dreams a world whose reality remains forever unattainable… The more projections are thrust in between the subject and the environment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusions. A forty-five-year-old patient who had suffered from a compulsion neurosis since he was twenty and had become completely cut off from the world once said to me: “But I can never admit to myself that I’ve wasted the best twenty-five years of my life!” It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course—for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop him.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 9. Part II: Aion

With considerable effort, however, we can integrate the contents of the shadow in our personality, and become partly conscious of it. This is a lifelong process, and is indispensable for individuation (becoming who you are).

The reason it is so difficult to acquire insight into one’s own shadow is that inferior personality traits are mostly of an emotional nature. Emotions and affects are to a large extent relatively autonomous; they possess consciousness and can only with great difficulty be controlled. If it is not only one’s own shadow that stands behind the projections but also the contrasexual components of the personality, or perhaps still deeper archetypal contents, then insight into the projection in which these are involved is accompanied by almost insuperable difficulties.

Jung compares the personal shadow with the collective shadow:

“With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow — so far as its nature is personal. But when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognise the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 9. Part II: Aion

Jung: Anima and Animus Projection

The Great Red Dragon and the Woman clothed with the Sun – William Blake

While the shadow is always of the same sex as the subject, when we talk of the opposite sex, the source of projections take the form of a contrasexual figure: the anima (the female psychological tendencies in man) and the animus (the male psychological tendencies in woman). I have done a video explaining these concepts as well.

Jung calls shadow integration the ‘apprentice-piece’, while anima or animus integration is the ‘master-piece’. This is in the context of individuation. Without a recognition of the shadow, it is impossible to integrate the anima or animus.

While the shadow represents first and foremost the personal unconscious, the anima and animus represent the collective unconscious. They symbolise the eternal images of man and woman, of Logos and Eros, which are projected onto real men and women.

A man can project his anima by overvaluing his masculine aspect in detriment to his feminine qualities, by partaking in pseudo-intellectual dialogues, and by treating woman simply as an object to fulfil his erotic fantasies, or to make stereotypical assumptions about patterns of behaviour such as “the way women are”.

There can also be an overattachment to one’s anima which is just as harmful, such as a man that is too effeminate and is preyed upon by women, or a man who lives regressively and seeks to return to his childhood under the protecting circle of the mother.

Perhaps the most common form of anima projection is being suddenly seized in a maddening and passionate love, like Eros, the Greek god of love shooting a love-igniting arrow. If those sensual pleasures fail the person who desires and wishes for them, he will suffer, pierced by the arrow of pain.

The projection of the animus of woman takes on a slightly different form. It takes on a hidden conviction about one’s beliefs, thoughts and assumptions. Such as wanting love but at the same time not believing anyone loves her. The father endows his daughter with unarguable true opinions, of “the right thing to do”, not including the daughter’s own opinion. This may lead a woman to flee into a dreamy fantasy land filled with all the desires and judgments of how things ought to be. Moreover, the animus personifies all the cold and destructive reflections that invade a woman which get her into a state where she even wishes death to others.

A mother who neglects her spiritual side may compensate by expecting an achievement from her son, such as having him pursue an ambitious academic career in order to satisfy her unconscious expectation.

Many people are brought back to themselves through the loving appreciation of another person. The teacher or the therapist who gives credit to his pupil or patient through the expectation of positive results can often nurture a blossoming of the other’s real personality and gifts. One day, though, this projection naturally falls away, and then it must be proven whether one can withdraw his projection and remain himself even without such help. This transition can be managed with the necessary wisdom, and awareness of one’s psychic reality.

Projection and Projectile

Whenever projection takes place, there is first of all a sender and a receiver. One of the oldest ways of symbolising projection is by means of projectiles, especially the magic arrow or shot that harms other people. It is generally believed that such a projectile is shot by a god, spirit, demon or some other mythological being, or by an evil person, and that it “hits” us, causing us to fall ill. The symbol of the arrow is a visual expression of being suddenly hit by a mood or an emotion that often strikes one like lightning out of a blue sky.

In late antiquity the suspicion had already arisen that certain gods might have something to do with the way in which emotions work in human beings, a view that was especially furthered by astrological speculations. Thus Saturn has something to do with a melancholy turn of mind, Mars with aggression and initiative, Venus and Cupid with love and sexuality – all states of mind or moods that strike people suddenly and overwhelmingly and for a time can overpower the conscious ego.

These phenomena are projections from the background of the psyche, autonomous inner images obeying no conscious intention, but coming and going at their own volition. Jung described these as archetypes, collectively-inherited forms that produce similar thoughts, mythological images, feelings, and emotions in human beings. These represent the spiritual contents of the unconscious, while the animal instinct, those impulses to action that are characteristic of the human species, represent the instinctual aspect of the unconscious.

Ultimately, however, it appears that projections always originate in the archetypes and in unconscious complexes.

An attack of aggressive hatred, for example, is felt by us as coming not from Mars but rather from an “evil adversary” who “deserves” to be hated (shadow projection), erotic passion not from Cupid but from a woman who arouses this passion in a man (anima projection).

The harmful words of human beings are like arrows. Deceitful people bend their tongue like a bow, and shoot a deadly arrow. Such activities as we learn from practical psychological experience are triggered by negative projections.

As soon as a person projects a bit of his shadow onto another human being, he is incited to this kind of rancorous speech. The words that hit the other person like projectiles symbolise the negativity directed against the other person by the one who is projecting.

When one becomes the target of another person’s negative projection, one often experiences that hatred almost physically as a projectile.

Active and passive projection

Jung distinguishes between two kinds of projection: active and passive.

Active projection occurs when we thoughtlessly take for granted that the other person is like us and that what is valid for us is also valid for him, so that we feel justified in “improving” him, that is, in violating him psychologically. Jung writes:

“Just as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naively suppose that people are as we imagine them to be… We still go on naively projecting our own psychology into our fellow human beings. In this way, everyone creates in himself a series of more or less imaginary relationships based essentially on projection.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche

Passive projection includes an act of empathetic feeling, which serves to bring the object into an intimate relationship with the subject. In order to establish this relationship, the subject detaches a content – a feeling, for instance, lodges it in the object, thereby animating it, and in this way draws the object into the sphere of the subject. All compassion is grounded in this kind of unconscious identity with the others.

Passive projection—that is, unconscious empathy—is part of the psychological principle of Eros and forms the basis of all social relations; active projection, on the other hand, belongs to the realm of Logos, since it is concerned with an act of recognition or judgment, by means of which we make a distinction between ourselves and the—itself unknown—object. Both principles can in practice flow into and out of each other.

Introjection

Passive projection is similar to what is known as introjection, the assimilation of object to subject. The difference is that introjection is not necessarily empathetic, it may also arise from a need of respect, power or superiority.

Introjection can be defined as unconsciously adopting the thoughts and behaviours of other people (instead of projecting them onto others). This is a natural process of a child’s development and relationship with his parents. One naturally introjects the qualities of those whom one looks up to, admires or worships. This may, however, include the bad aspects of a person, or lead to a superiority complex to the point of introjecting the qualities of God onto oneself.

Mystical participation

The French ethnologist Lévy-Bruhl used the term participation mystique or “mystical participation”, the archaic identity of subject and object lives at the very bottom of our psyche.

We are instinctively tied to symbols that precedes all intellectualism. Our ancestors were much more governed by their unconscious instincts and participation in nature and the objects surrounding them. The inner world was merged with the external world. It is only a recent phenomenon that our world seems to be cleansed of all superstitious and irrational elements. However, this is not so for the inner world, which does not discriminate between subject and object. Jung writes:

“[O]nly certain functions and areas have outgrown the primary mystic identity with the object. Primitive man has a minimum of self-awareness combined with a maximum of attachment to the object; hence the object can exercise a direct magical compulsion upon him… Self-awareness gradually developed out of this initial state of identity and went hand in hand with the differentiation of subject and object… But as everyone knows, our self-awareness is still a long way behind our actual knowledge.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche

Mystical participation is closely related to projection, because the projected mythological images are present in objects, people and situations.

Thought forms, universally understandable gestures, and many attitudes follow a pattern that was established long before man developed a reflective consciousness. It is conceivable that the early origins of man’s capacity to reflect come from the painful consequences of violent emotional clashes. For example, a bushman who in a moment of anger and disappointment at his failure to catch any fish, strangles his much beloved only son, and is then seized with immense regret as he holds the little dead body in his arms.

Modern man knows more about mythological symbolism than did any generation before our own, they have become the object of conscious reflection. Primitive man did not reflect upon their symbols, they lived them and were unconsciously animated by their meaning.

Unconscious contents, however, cannot be integrated into the subject into their entirety. The process is like that of peeling an onion – one or more layers of an unconscious complex can, indeed, be integrated by the conscious personality but not the core itself.

In the core we find the archetypes of the collective unconscious, which create projections against our will, because such contents cannot be integrated by ego-consciousness. If one wants to understand these projections and prevent their renewal, the content must be recognised as psychically real, though not as a part of the subject but rather as an autonomous power. If we could see through all our projections down to the last traces, our personality would be extended to cosmic dimensions.

Jung once compared the ego to a man who sails out in his boat (the philosophical or religious ideas behind his conscious view of the world) onto the sea of the unconscious to go fishing. He must take care not to haul more fish (that is, more unconscious contents) from the sea into his boat than the boat can carry, or it will sink. This explains why people with weak egos often defend themselves so desperately against any and every insight into their negative projections – they cannot bear the weight, the moral pressure, that results from such insight.

Psychological Projection as Inner Gold

“I learn so much from watching, and one of the things I observe most carefully is the exchange of inner, alchemical gold. Inner gold is the highest value in the human psyche. It is our soul, the Self, the innermost part of our being.”

Robert A. Johnson, Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection

In his book Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection, Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson presents psychological projection as giving up our “inner gold” to those whom we idealise or are attracted to. He writes:

“When we awaken to a new possibility in our lives, we often see it first in another person. A part of us that has been hidden is about to emerge, but it doesn’t go in a straight line from our unconscious to becoming conscious. It travels by way of an intermediary, a host. We project our gold onto someone, and suddenly we’re consumed with that person. The first inkling of this is when the other person appears to be so luminous that he (or she) glows in the dark. That’s a sure sign that something is changing in us and we are projecting our gold onto the other person.”

Robert A. Johnson, Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection

By observing the things we attribute to the other person, we see our own depth and meaning. Our gold goes first from us to them, and eventually it will come back to us. Projecting our inner gold offers us the best chance for an advance in consciousness. And we must learn the arduous task of “taking back” this gold as we move through life’s journey.

The work of the alchemists was to transmute base metals into gold. There were charlatans only concerned with material possession. However, for the true alchemists, gold is the metaphor for the spiritual and psychological task of inner transformation.

When we see that we have given our spiritual gold to someone to hold for us, there are several ways we might respond. We could go to him or her and say, “The meaning of my life has suddenly appeared in the glow in your eyes. May I tell you about it?” This is another way of saying, “I have given you my inner gold. Will you carry it for me for a while?”

We cling to people who are the repositories of our gold and won’t let them loose. If this person were to you leave you, and you can’t function properly alone – it probably means that he or she has taken your gold.

The exchange of gold is a mysterious process. It is our gold, but it’s too heavy for us, so we need someone else to carry it for a time. That person becomes synonymous with meaning. A smile can raise us to heavenly heights, a frown will hurl us to hellish depths, so great is the power of meaning.

One reason we hesitate to carry our own gold is that it is dangerously close to God. Our gold has Godlike characteristics, and it is difficult to bear the weight of it. This is the original meaning of the terms godfather and godmother. That person is the carrier of Godlike qualities for you, someone who carries the subtle part of your life—a parent in an interior, Godlike way.

Robert tells the story of one of his patients who would compliment him every time they saw each other. Robert would tell him, all these qualities are your values. You need to drape it around my neck for a while, but you’re going to take it back eventually. He’d tell Robert how valuable he was to him, how lucky he was to have him as a therapist. He was talking about his inner gold and was desperate for someone to take it off his shoulders, for it was too heavy for him. This went on for almost five years. Robert writes:

“Then, one day, he said, “I want my gold back.” I had noticed that he was getting restless, so I agreed. “Things are changing”, I said. “Let’s do a ceremony to put the gold back in your pocket.” I conjured up a small piece of gold, the size of a pea, and a few days later we had the ceremony. He held the kernel of gold, shaking, suddenly more aware of what he had been doing. Then he put it in my hands and said, anxiously, “Suppose you don’t give it back?” … I said, “This is your gold, and it belongs only in your pocket. I am honoured that you would allow me to hold it for you all these years. But it’s yours, and it needs to go back to you.” … The next day, he had his gold all over me again. He couldn’t hold it and wanted me to take it back. The exchange of gold is not entirely a voluntary matter. Sometimes it takes a few round trips. We traded the gold back and forth several more times until one day he could withstand it. Since then, I haven’t heard any more about him wanting it back.”

Robert A. Johnson, Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection

When the exchange of gold proceeds well, we mature and eventually become strong enough to ask for our gold back. Carrying someone’s gold is a fine art and a high responsibility. If you are the recipient of someone’s gold, hold it carefully and be prepared to give it back within a microsecond’s notice. Unfortunately, there are people who collect inner gold and refuse to give it back. It’s a kind of murder.

It is only after you get your gold back that you can see the gold of the other person. When the time is right, when you are ready to bear the weight, you must get your gold back.

“If it has an impact, it means there is a war inside me. You set it off, but what you set off is my business. Anything that can burn in a person should burn. Only the things that are fireproof are worth keeping. If you can hurt my feelings, they are better off hurt, because it’s an error in me.”

Robert A. Johnson, Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection