Carl Jung: In our diagram, Christ and the devil appear as equal and opposite, thus conforming to the idea of the “adversary.”

In our diagram, Christ and the devil appear as equal and opposite, thus conforming to the idea of the “adversary.”

This opposition means conflict to the last, and it is the task of humanity to endure this conflict until the time or turning-point is reached where good and evil begin to relativize themselves, to doubt themselves, and the cry is raised for a morality “beyond good and evil.”

In the age of Christianity and in the domain of trinitarian thinking such an idea is simply out of the question, because the conflict is too violent for evil to be assigned any other logical relation to the Trinity than that of an absolute opposite: In an emotional opposition, i.e., in a conflict situation, thesis and antithesis cannot be viewed together at the same time.

This only becomes possible with cooler assessment of the relative value of good and the relative non-value of evil.

Then it can no longer be doubted, either, that a common life unites not only the Father and the “light” son, but the Father and his dark emanation.

The unspeakable conflict posited by duality resolves itself in a fourth principle, which restores the unity of the first in its full development.

The rhythm is built up in three steps, but the resultant symbol is a quaternity ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 258.

Carl Jung: The archons issued from the womb of the unfathomable abyss,

Inasmuch as the devil was an angel created by God and “fell like lightning from heaven,” he too is a divine “procession” that became Lord of this world.

It is significant that the Gnostics thought of him sometimes as the imperfect demiurge and sometimes as the Saturnine archon, Ialdabaoth.

Pictorial representations of this archon correspond in every detail with those of a diabolical demon.

He symbolized the power of darkness from which Christ came to rescue humanity.

The archons issued from the womb of the unfathomable abyss, i.e., from the same source that produced the Gnostic Christ ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 255

Carl Jung: The act of love embodied in the Son is counterbalanced by Lucifer's denial

If we disregard the specifically Persian system of dualism, it appears that no real devil is to be found anywhere in the early period of man's spiritual development. In the Old Testament, he is vaguely foreshadowed in the figure of Satan.

But the real devil first appears as the adversary of Christ, and with him we gaze for the first time into the luminous realm of divinity on the one hand and into the abyss of hell on the other.

The devil is autonomous; he cannot be brought under God's rule, for if he could he would not have the power to be the adversary of Christ, but would only be God's instrument.

Once the indefinable One unfolds into two, it becomes something definite: the man Jesus, the Son and Logos.

This statement is possible only by virtue of something else that is not Jesus, not Son or Logos.

The act of love embodied in the Son is counterbalanced by Lucifer's denial ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 254

Carl Jung: Hence the devil remained outside the Trinity as the “ape of God” and in opposition to it.

Hence the devil remained outside the Trinity as the “ape of God” and in opposition to it.

Medieval representations of the triune God as having three heads are based on the three-headedness of Satan, as we find it, for instance, in Dante.

This would point to an infernal Antitrinity, a true “umbra trinitatis” analogous to the Antichrist.

The devil is, undoubtedly, an awkward figure: he is the “odd man out” in the Christian cosmos.

That is why people would like to minimize his importance by euphemistic ridicule or by ignoring his existence altogether; or, better still, to lay the blame for him at man's door.

This is in fact done by the very people who would protest mightily if sinful man should credit himself, equally, with the origin of all good.

A glance at the Scriptures, however, is enough to show us the importance of the devil in the divine drama of redemption.

If the power of the Evil One had been as feeble as certain persons would wish it to appear, either the world would not have needed God himself to come down to it or it would have lain within the power of man to set the world to rights, which has certainly not happened so far `Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 252.

Image: Relief from Samothrace in the Louvre showing Agamemnon being initiated into the rites of the Cabeiri.

What serviceable forms rise from your body, you thieving abyss! These appear as elemental spirits, dressed in wrinkled garb, Cabiri, with delightful misshapen forms, young and yet old, dwarfish, shriveled, unspectacular bearers of secret arts, possessors of ridiculous wisdom, first formations of the unformed gold, worms that crawl from the liberated egg of the Gods, incipient ones, unborn, still invisible. What should your appearance be to us What new arts do you bear up from the inaccessible treasure chamber, the sun yoke from the egg of the Gods You still have roots in the soil like plants and you are animal faces / of the human body; you are foolishly sweet, uncanny, primordial, and earthly. We cannot grasp your essence, you gnomes, you object-
souls. You have your origin in the lowest. Do you want to become giants, you Tom Thumbs Do you belong to the followers of the son of the earth Are you the earthly feet of the Godhead What do you want Speak!”

The Cabiri: “We come to greet you as the master of the lower nature.”

I: ”Are you speaking to mer Am I your master?”

The Cabiri: “You were not, but you are now.”
I: “So you declare. And so be it. Yet what should I do with your following?”

The Cabiri: “We carry what is not to be carried from below to above. We are the juices that rise secretly, not by force, but sucked out of inertia and affixed to what is growing. We know the unknown ways and the inexplicable laws of living matter. We carry up what slumbers in the earthly; what is dead and yet enters
into the living. We do this slowly and easily; what you do in vain in your human way. We complete what is impossible for you.”

I: “What should I leave to you? Which troubles can I transfer to you? What should I not do, and what do you do better?”

The Cabiri: “You forget the lethargy of matter. You want to pull up with your own force what can only rise slowly; ingesting itself affixed to itself from within. Spare yourself the trouble, or you will disturb our work.”

I: “Should I trust you, you untrustworthy ones, you slaves and slave souls? Get to work. Let it be so.”

I “It seems to me that I gave you a long time. Neither did I descend to you nor did I disturb your work. I lived in the light of day and did the work of the day. What did you do?”

The Cabiri: “We hauled things up, we built. We placed stone upon stone. Now you stand on solid ground.”

I: “I feel the ground more solid. I stretch upward.”

The Cabiri: “We forged a flashing / sword for you, with which you can cut the knot that entangles you.”

I: “I take the sword firmly in my hand. I lift it for the blow.”

The Cabiri: “We also place before you the devilish, skillfully twined knot that locks and seals you. Strike, only sharpness will cut through it.”

I: “Let me see it, the great knot, all wound round! Truly a masterpiece of inscrutable nature, a wily natural tangle of roots grown through one another! Only Mother Nature, the blind weaver, could work such a tangle! A great snarled ball and a thousand small knots, all artfully tied, intertwined, truly; a human brain! Am I seeing straight? What did you do? You set my brain before me! Did you give me a sword so that its flashing sharpness slices through my brain? What were you thinking of?”

The Cabiri: “The womb of nature wove the brain, the womb of the earth gave the iron. So the Mother gave you both: entanglement and severing.”

I: “Mysterious! Do you really want to make me the executioner of my own brain?”

The Cabiri: “It befits you as the master of the lower nature. Man is entangled in his brain and the sword is also given to him to cut through the entanglement.”

I: “What is the entanglement you speak of?”

The Cabiri: “The entanglement is your madness, the sword is the overcoming of madness.”

I: “You offsprings of the devil, who told you that I am mad? You earth spirits, you roots of clay and excrement, are you not yourselves the root fibers of my brain? You polyp-snared rubbish,
channels for juice knotted together, parasites upon parasites, all sucked up and deceived, secretly climbing up over one another by night, you deserve the flashing sharpness of my sword. You want to persuade me to cut through you? Are you contemplating self-destruction? How come nature gives birth to creatures that she herself wants to destroy?”

The Cabiri: “Do not hesitate. We need destruction since we ourselves are the entanglement. He who wishes to conquer new land / brings down the bridges behind him. Let us not exist anymore. We are the thousand canals in which everything also flows back again into its origin.”

I: “Should I sever my own roots? Kill my own people, whose king I am? Should I make my own tree wither? You really are the sons of the devil.”

The Cabiri: “Strike, we are servants who want to die for their master.”

I: “What will happen if I strike?”

The Cabiri: “Then you will no longer be your brain, but will exist beyond your madness. Do you not see, your madness is your brain, the terrible entanglement and intertwining in the connection of the roots, in the nets of canals, the confusion of fibers. Being engrossed in the brain makes you wild. Strike! He who finds the way rises up over his brain. You are a Tom Thumb in the brain, beyond the brain you gain the form of a giant.

We are surely sons of the devil, but did you not forge us out of the hot and dark? So we have something of its nature and of yours. The devil says that everything that exists is also worthy, since it perishes. As sons of the devil we want destruction, but as your creatures we want our own destruction. We want to rise up in you through death. We are roots that suck up from all sides. Now you have everything that you need, therefore chop us up, tear us out.”

I: “Will I miss you as servants? As a master I need slaves.”

The Cabiri: “The master serves himself”

I: “You ambiguous sons of the devil, these words are your undoing. May my sword strike you, this blow shall be valid forever.”

The Cabiri “Woe, woe! What we feared, what we desired, has come to pass.” ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 320-321.

Carl Jung: The Devil as Joy

The Devil depicted in the Temptation of Christ, by Ary Scheffer, 1854.

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.

Although the devil very much abhors religion for its particular solemnity and candor, it has become apparent, however, that it is precisely through religion that the devil can be brought to an understanding. What I said about dancing struck him because

I spoke about something that belonged in his own domain.

He fails to take seriously only what concerns others because that is the peculiarity of all devils.

In such a manner, I arrive at his seriousness, and with this we reach common / ground where understanding is possible.

The devil is convinced that dancing is neither lust nor madness, but an expression of joy, which is something proper to neither one nor the other. In this I agree with the devil. Therefore he humanizes himself before my eyes.

But I turn green like a tree in spring.

Yet that joy is the devil, or that the devil is joy, has got to worry you. I pondered this for over a week, and I fear that it has not been enough.

You dispute the fact that your joy is your devil.

But it seems as if there is always something devilish about joy.

If your joy is no devil for you, then possibly it is for your neighbors, since joy is the most supreme flowering and greening of life.

This knocks you down, and you must grope for a new path, since the light in that joyful fire has completely gone out for you.

Or your joy tears your neighbor away and throws him off course, since life is like a great fire that torches everything in its vicinity.

But fire is the element of the devil.

When I saw that the devil is joy, surely I would have wanted to make a pact with him.

But you can make no pact with joy, because it immediately disappears.

Therefore you cannot capture the devil either.

Yes, it belongs to his essence that he cannot be captured.

He is stupid if he lets himself be caught, and you gain nothing from having yet one more stupid devil.

The devil always seeks to saw off the branch on which you sit.

That is useful and protects you 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.

Through my coming to terms with the devil, he accepted some of my seriousness, and I accepted some of his joy.

This gave me courage.

But if the devil has gotten more earnest, one must brace oneself.

It is always a risky thing to accept joy, but it leads us to life and its disappointment, from which the wholeness of our life becomes. [The Red Book; Page 260-261]