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object:4.08 - THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM OF THE KINGS RENEWAL
book class:Mysterium Coniunctionis
author class:Carl Jung
subject class:Psychology
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter



8. THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM OF THE KINGS RENEWAL
[514] Medical psychology has recognized today that it is a therapeutic necessity, indeed, the first requisite of any thorough psychological method, for consciousness to confront its shadow.396 In the end this must lead to some kind of union, even though the union consists at first in an open conflict, and often remains so for a long time. It is a struggle that cannot be abolished by rational means.397 When it is wilfully repressed it continues in the unconscious and merely expresses itself indirectly and all the more dangerously, so no advantage is gained. The struggle goes on until the opponents run out of breath. What the outcome will be can never be seen in advance. The only certain thing is that both parties will be changed; but what the product of the union will be it is impossible to imagine. The empirical material shows that it usually takes the form of a subjective experience which, according to the unanimous testimony of history, is always of a religious order. If, therefore, the conflict is consciously endured and the analyst follows its course without prejudice, he will unfailingly observe compensations from the unconscious which aim at producing a unity. He will come across numerous symbols similar to those found in alchemyoften, indeed, the very same. He will also discover that not a few of these spontaneous formations have a numinous quality in harmony with the mysticism of the historical testimonies. It may happen, besides, that a patient, who till then had shut his eyes to religious questions, will develop an unexpected interest in these matters. He may, for instance, find himself getting converted from modern paganism to Christianity or from one creed to another, or even getting involved in fundamental theological questions which are incomprehensible to a layman. It is unnecessary for me to point out here that not every analysis leads to a conscious realization of the conflict, just as not every surgical operation is as drastic as a resection of the stomach. There is a minor surgery, too, and in the same way there is a minor psycho therapy whose operations are harmless and require no such elucidation as I am concerned with here. The patients I have in mind are a small minority with certain spiritual demands to be satisfied, and only these patients undergo a development which presents the doctor with the kind of problem we are about to discuss.
[515] Experience shows that the union of antagonistic elements is an irrational occurrence which can fairly be described as mystical, provided that one means by this an occurrence that cannot be reduced to anything else or regarded as in some way unau thentic. The decisive criterion here is not rationalistic opinions or regard for accepted theories, but simply and solely the value for the patient of the solution he has found and experienced. In this respect the doctor, whose primary concern is the preservation of life, is in an advantageous position, since he is by training an empiricist and has always had to employ medicines whose healing power he knew even though he did not understand how it worked. Equally, he finds all too often that the scientifically explained and attested healing power of his medicines does not work in practice.
[516] If, now, the alchemists meant by their old king that he was God himself, this also applies to his son. They themselves must have shrunk from thinking out the logical consequences of their symbolism, otherwise they would have had to assert that God grows old and must be renewed through the art. Such a thought would have been possible at most in the Alexandrian epoch, when gods sprang up like mushrooms. But for medieval man it was barely conceivable.398 He was far more likely to consider that the art would change something in himself, for which reason he regarded its product as a kind of

. Had he had any idea of psychology, he would almost certainly have called his healing medicament psychic and would have regarded the kings renewal as a transformation of the conscious dominantwhich naturally has nothing to do with a magical intervention in the sphere of the gods.
[517] Mans ideas and definitions of God have followed one another kaleidoscopically in the course of the millennia, and the evangelist Mark would have been very much astonished if he could have taken a look at Harnacks History of Dogma. And yet it is not a matter of indifference which definitions of his conscious dominant man considers to be binding, or what sort of views he happens to have in this regard. For on this depends whether consciousness will be king or not. If the unconscious rules to the exclusion of all else, everything is liable to end in destruction, as the present state of things gives us reason to fear. If the dominant is too weak, life is wasted in fruitless conflict because Sol and Luna will not unite. But if the son is the dominant, then Sol is his right eye and Luna his left. The dominant must contain them both, the standpoint of ego-consciousness and the standpoint of the archetypes in the unconscious. The binding force that inevitably attaches to a dominant should not mean a prison for one and a carte-blanche for the other, but duty and justice for both.
[518] What the nature is of that unity which in some incomprehensible way embraces the antagonistic elements eludes our human judgment, for the simple reason that nobody can say what a being is like that unites the full range of consciousness with that of the unconscious. Man knows no more than his consciousness, and he knows himself only so far as this extends. Beyond that lies an unconscious sphere with no assignable limits, and it too belongs to the phenomenon Man. We might therefore say that perhaps the One is like a man, that is, determined and determinable and yet undetermined and indeterminable. Always one ends up with paradoxes when knowledge reaches its limits. The ego knows it is part of this being, but only a part. The symbolic phenomenology of the unconscious makes it clear that although consciousness is accorded the status of spiritual kingship with all its attendant dangers, we cannot say what kind of king it will be. This depends on two factors: on the decision of the ego and the assent of the unconscious. Any dominant that does not have the approval of the one or the other proves to be unstable in the long run. We know how often in the course of history consciousness has subjected its highest and most central ideas to drastic revision and correction, but we know little or nothing about the archetypal processes of change which, we may suppose, have taken place in the unconscious over the millennia, even though such speculations have no firm foundation. Nevertheless the possibility remains that the unconscious may reveal itself in an unexpected way at any time.*
[519] The alchemical figure of the king has provoked this long discussion because it contains the whole of the hero myth including the kingsand Godsrenewal, and on the other hand because, as we conjecture, it symbolizes the dominant that rules consciousness. King Sol is not a pleonasm; it denotes a consciousness which is not only conscious as such but is conscious in a quite special way. It is controlled and directed by a dominant that, in the last resort, is the arbiter of values. The sun is the common light of nature, but the king, the dominant, introduces the human element and brings man nearer to the sun, or the sun nearer to man.399
[520] Consciousness is renewed through its descent into the unconscious, whereby the two are joined. The renewed consciousness does not contain the unconscious but forms with it a totality symbolized by the son. But since father and son are of one being, and in alchemical language King Sol, representing the renewed consciousness, is the son, consciousness would be absolutely identical with the King as dominant. For the alchemists this difficulty did not exist, because the King was projected into a postulated substance and hence behaved merely as an object to the consciousness of the artifex. But if the projection is withdrawn by psychological criticism, we encounter the aforesaid difficulty that the renewed consciousness apparently coincides with the renewed king, or son. I have discussed the psychological aspect of this problem in the second of the Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, in the chapter on the mana personality. The difficulty cannot be resolved by purely logical argument but only by careful observation and analysis of the psychic state itself. Rather than launch out into a detailed discussion of case-histories I would prefer to recall the well-known words of Paul, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me (Gal. 2 : 20), which aptly describe the peculiar nature of this state. From this we can see that that other, earlier state, when the king aged and disappeared, is marked by a consciousness in which a critical ego knowingly took the place of the sick king, looking back to an earlier mythical time when this ego still felt absolutely dependent on a higher and mightier non-ego. The subsequent disappearance of the feeling of dependence and the simultaneous streng thening of criticism are felt as progress, enlightenment, liberation, indeed as redemption, although a one-sided and limited being has usurped the throne of a king. A personal ego seizes the reins of power to its own destruction; for mere egohood, despite possessing an anima rationalis, is not even sufficient for the guidance of personal life, let alone for the guidance of men. For this purpose it always needs a mythical dominant, yet such a thing cannot simply be invented and then believed in. Contemplating our own times we must say that though the need for an effective dominant was realized to a large extent, what was offered was nothing more than an arbitrary invention of the moment. The fact that it was also believed in goes to prove the gullibility and cluelessness of the public and at the same time the profoundly felt need for a spiritual authority transcending egohood. An authority of this kind is never the product of rational reflection or an invention of the moment, which always remains caught in the narrow circle of ego-bound consciousness; it springs from traditions whose roots go far deeper both historically and psychologically. Thus a real and essentially religious renewal can be based, for us, only on Christianity. The extremely radical reformation of Hinduism by the Buddha assimilated the traditional spirituality of India in its entirety and did not thrust a rootless novelty upon the world. It neither denied nor ignored the Hindu pantheon swarming with millions of gods, but boldly introduced Man, who before that had not been represented at all. Nor did Christ, regarded simply as a Jewish reformer, destroy the law, but made it, rather, into a matter of conviction. He likewise, as the regenerator of his age, set against the Greco-Roman pantheon and the speculations of the philosophers the figure of Man, not intending it as a contradiction but as the fulfilment of a mythologem that existed long before him the conception of the Anthropos with its complex Egyptian, Persian, and Hellenistic background.
[521] Any renewal not deeply rooted in the best spiritual tradition is ephemeral; but the dominant that grows from historical roots act like a living being within the ego-bound man. He does not possess it, it possesses him; therefore the alchemists said that the artifex is not the master but rather the minister of the stoneclearly showing that the stone is indeed a king towards whom the artifex behaves as a subject.
[522] Although the renewed king corresponds to a renewed consciousness, this consciousness is as different from its former state as the filius regius differs from the enfeebled old king. Just as the old king must forgo his power and make way for the little up start ego, so the ego, when the renewed king returns, must step into the background. It still remains the sine qua non of consciousness,400 but it no longer imagines that it can settle everything and do everything by the force of its will. It no longer asserts that where theres a will theres a way. When lucky ideas come to it, it does not take the credit for them, but begins to realize how dangerously close it had been to an inflation. The scope of its willing and doing becomes commensurate with reality again after an Ash Wednesday has descended upon its pre-sumptuousness.401
[523] We can compare the logical sequence of psychological changes with the alchemical symbolism as follows:
Ego-bound state with feeble dominant
Sick king, enfeebled by age, about to die
Ascent of the unconscious and/or descent of the ego into the unconscious
Disappearance of the king in his mothers body, or his dissolution in water
Conflict and synthesis of conscious and unconscious
Pregnancy, sick-bed, symptoms, display of colours
Formation of a new dominant; circular symbols (e.g., mandala) of the self
Kings son, hermaphrodite, rotundum402
[524] Though the comparison holds good on average, the symbolism of the Cantilena differs from the above schema in that the apotheosis of the filius regius takes place simultaneously with that of Queen Luna, thus paralleling the marriage in the Apocalypse. The Christian prototype gained the upper hand in Ripley, whereas usually the coniunctio precedes the production of the lapis and the latter is understood as the child of Sol and Luna. To that extent the lapis exactly corresponds to the psychological idea of the self, the product of conscious and unconscious. In Christian symbolism, on the other hand, there is a marriage of the Lamb (the Apocalyptic Christ) with the bride (Luna-Ecclesia). Because the lapis is itself androgynous, a synthesis of male and female, there is no need for another coniunctio. The symbolical androgyny of Christ does not, curiously enough, eliminate the marriage of the Lamb the two things exist side by side.
[525] We have here a discrepancy between the alchemical and psychological symbolism and the Christian. It is indeed difficult to imagine what kind of coniunctio beyond the union of conscious (male) and unconscious (female) in the regenerated dominant could be meant, unless we assume, with the dogmatic tradition, that the regenerated dominant also brings the corpus mysticum of mankind (Ecclesia as Luna) into glorious reality. Among the alchemists, who were mostly solitaries by choice, the motif of the Apocalyptic marriage, characterized as the marriage of the Lamb (Rev. 19 : 7ff.), is missing, the accent here lying on the sacrificial appellation lamb. According to the oldest and most primitive tradition the king, despite his dignity and power, was a victim offered up for the prosperity of his country and his people, and in his godlike form he was even eaten. As we know, this archetype underwent an extremely complicated development in Christianity. From the standpoint of Christian symbolism the alchemists conception of the goal lacked, firstly, the motif of the heavenly marriage and, secondly, the almost more important motif of sacrifice and the totem meal. (The mourned gods of Asia MinorTammuz, Adonis, etc.were, in all probability, originally sacrifices for the fruitfulness of the year.) The lapis was decidedly an ideal for hermits, a goal for isolated individuals. Besides that, it was a food (cibus immortalis), could be multiplied indefinitely, was a living being with body, soul, and spirit, an androgyne with incorruptible body, etc. Though likened to King Sol and even named such, it was not a sponsus, not a victim, and belonged to no community; it was like the treasure hid in a field, the which when a man hath found, he hideth (Matt. 13 : 44), or like one pearl of great price, for which a man went and sold all that he had, and bought it (Matt. 13 : 46). It was the well-guarded, precious secret of the individual.403 And though the old Masters emphasized that they would not hide their secret jealously 404 and would reveal it to all seekers, it was perfectly clear that the stone remained the preoccupation of the individual.
[526] In this connection it should not be forgotten that in antiquity certain influences, evidently deriving from the Gnostic doctrine of the hermaphroditic Primordial Man,405 penetrated into Christianity and there gave rise to the view that Adam had been created an androgyne.406 And since Adam was the prototype of Christ, and Eve, sprung from his side, that of the Church, it is understandable that a picture of Christ should develop showing distinctly feminine features.407 In religious art the Christ-image has retained this character to the present day.408 Its veiled androgyny reflects the hermaphroditism of the lapis, which in this respect has more affinity with the views of the Gnostics.
[527] In recent times the theme of androgyny has been subjected to quite special treatment in a book by a Catholic writer which merits our attention. This is Die Gnosis des Christentums, by Georg Koepgen, an important work that appeared in 1939 with the episcopal imprimatur in Salzburg, and since then has been placed on the Index. Of the Apollinian-Dionysian conflict in antiquity, Koepgen says it found its solution in Christianity because in the person of Jesus the male is united with the female. Only in him do we find this juxtaposition of male and female in unbroken unity. If men and women can come together as equals in Christian worship, this has more than an accidental significance: it is the fulfilment of the androgyny that was made manifest in Christ (p. 316). The change of sex in the believer is suggested in Rev. 14 : 4: These are they that were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. Koepgen says of this passage: Here the new androgynous form of existence becomes visible. Christianity is neither male nor female, it is male-female in the sense that the male paired with the female in Jesuss soul. In Jesus the tension and polaristic strife of sex are resolved in an androgynous unity. And the Church, as his heir, has taken this over from him: she too is androgynous. As regards her constitution the Church is hierarchically masculine, yet her soul is thoroughly feminine. The virgin priest . . . fulfils in his soul the androgynous unity of male and female; he renders visible again the psychic dimension which Christ showed us for the first time when he revealed the manly virginity of his soul.409
[528] For Koepgen, therefore, not only Christ is androgynous but the Church as well, a remarkable conclusion the logic of which one cannot deny. The consequence of this is a special emphasis on bisexuality and then on the peculiar identity of the Church with Christ, which is based also on the doctrine of the corpus mysticum. This certainly forestalls the marriage of the Lamb at the end of time, for the androgyne has everything it needs410 and is already a complexio oppositorum. Who is not reminded here of the fragment from the Gospel according to the Egyptians cited by Clement of Alexandria: When ye have trampled on the garment of shame, and when the two become one and the male with the female is neither male nor female.411
[529] Koepgen introduces his book with a dedication and a motto. The first is: Renatis praedestinatione (To those who are reborn out of predestination), and the second is from John 14 : 12: He that believeth on me, the works that I do he shall do also, and greater works than these shall he do. The dedication echoes the motif of election, which the author shares with the alchemists. For Morienus had said of alchemy:
God vouchsafes this divine and pure science to his faithful and his servants, that is, to those on whom nature made it proper to confer it from the beginning of things. For this thing can be naught else but the gift of God most high, who commits and shows it as he will, and to whom he will of his faithful servants. For the Lord selects of his servants those whom he wills and chooses, to seek after this divine science which is concealed from man, and having sought it to keep it with them.412
Dorn says much the same: For it sometimes comes about, after many years, many labours, much study . . . that some are chosen, when much knocking,413 many prayers, and diligent enquiry have gone before.414
[530] The quotation from John is taken from the fourteenth chapter, where Christ teaches that whoever sees him sees the Father. He is in the Father and the Father is in him. The disciples are in him and he in them, moreover they will be sent the Holy Ghost as Paraclete and will do works that are greater than his own. This fourteenth chapter broaches a question that was to have great repercussions for the future: the problem of the Holy Ghost who will remain when Christ has gone, and who intensifies the interpenetration of the divine and the human to such a degree that we can properly speak of a Christification of the disciples. Among the Christian mystics this identity was carried again and again to the point of stigmatization. Only the mystics bring creativity into religion. That is probably why they can feel the presence and the workings of the Holy Ghost, and why they are nearer to the experience of brotherhood in Christ.
[531] Koepgen thinks along the same lines, as his dedication and motto show. It is easy to see what happens when the logical conclusion is drawn from the fourteenth chapter of John: the opus Christi is transferred to the individual. He then becomes the bearer of the mystery, and this development was unconsciously prefigured and anticipated in alchemy, which showed clear signs of becoming a religion of the Holy Ghost and of the Sapientia Dei. Koepgens standpoint is that of creative mysticism, which has always been critical of the Church. Though this is not obviously so in Koepgen, his attitude betrays itself indirectly in the living content of his book, which consistently presses for a deepening and broadening of the dogmatic ideas. Because he remained fully conscious of his conclusions, he does not stray so very far outside the Church, whereas the alchemists, because of their unconsciousness and naive lack of reflection, and unhampered by intellectual responsibility, went very much further in their symbolism. But the point of departure for both is the procreative, revelatory working of the Holy Ghost, who is a wind that bloweth where it listeth, and who advances beyond his own workings to greater works than these. The creative mystic was ever a cross for the Church, but it is to him that we owe what is best in humanity.415



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