This is what the Assumption of Maria means in actual living: to take back into the psyche what has been put upon the body, to take back centuries of misogyny, to take back into consciousness the physical, the feminine, and the inferior.~ James Hillman, The Myth of Analysis

If Lord of the Rings / Return of the King  re Jackson is Christian, it's the Marian / Magdalen / Holy Ghost as forth to the Trinity Christian. The Quaternity. (For a discussion, see below, from Answer to Job, XIX, CGJUNG CW XI.) Arwen, her flashbacks / forwards woven into the story (which wasn't in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but extrapolated from the Silmarillion) makes it also Return of the Queen... and she joins her king at the end as a conclusion that rides into the future, dynasty and all.

(I thought: as a woman, if I could choose between having children or immortality, I would choose children. At some point, this choice was made on a cosmic scale: It's a wondrous gamble, all of it, powers unimaginable putting will beyond reach into creatures like us...)

deborah

from Answer to Job,  CGJUNG,  in Psychology and Religion: West and East, CW Vol. XI

What is the use of a religion without a mythos, since religion means, if anything, precisely that function which links us back to eternal myth? 

 

 XIX

The promulgation of the new dogma of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary could, in itself, have been sufficient reason for examining the psychological background. It was interesting to note that, among the many articles published in the Catholic and Protestant press on the declaration of the dogma, there was not one, so far as I could see, which laid anything like the proper emphasis on what was undoubtedly the most powerful motive: namely, the popular movement and the psychological need behind it. Essentially, the writers of the articles were satisfied with learned con­siderations, dogmatic and historical, which have no bearing on the living religious process. But anyone who has fol­lowed with attention the visions of Mary which have been increasing in number over the last few decades, and has taken their psychological significance into account, might have known what was brewing. The fact, especially, that it was largely children who had the visions might have given pause for thought, for in such cases the collective unconscious is always at work. Incidentally, the Pope himself is rumoured to have had several visions of the Mother of God on the occasion of the declaration. One could have known for a long time that there was a deep longing in the masses for an intercessor and mediatrix who would at last take her place alongside the Holy Trinity and be received as the “Queen of Heaven and Bride at the heavenly court.” For more than a thousand years it had been taken for granted that the Mother of God dwelt there, and we know from the Old Testament that Sophia was with God before the creation. From the ancient Egyptian theology of the divine Pharaohs we know that God wants to become man by means of a human mother, and it was recognized even in prehistoric times that the primordial divine being is both male and female. But such a truth eventuates in time only when it is solemnly proclaimed or rediscovered. It is psychologically significant for our day that in the year 1950 the heavenly bride was united with the bridegroom. In order to interpret this event, one has to consider not only the arguments adduced by the Papal Bull, but the prefigurations in the apocalyptic marriage of the Lamb and in the Old Testament anamnesis of Sophia. The nuptial union in the thalamus (bridal-chamber) signifies the hieros gamos, and this in turn is the first step towards incarnation, towards the birth of the saviour who, since antiquity, was thought of as the filius solis et lunae, the filius sapientiae, and the equivalent of Christ. When, therefore, a longing for the exaltation of the Mother of God passes through the people, this tendency, if thought to its logical conclusion, means the desire for the birth of a saviour, a peacemaker, a “mediator pacem faciens inter inimicos.” (“A mediator making peace between enemies.”) Although he is already born in the pleroma, his birth in time can only be accomplished when it is perceived, recognized, and declared by man.

The motive and content of the popular movement which contributed to the Pope’s decision solemnly to declare the new dogma consist not in the birth of a new god, but in the continuing incarnation of God which began with Christ. Arguments based on historical criticism will never do justice to the new dogma; on the contrary, they are as lamentably wide of the mark as are the unqualified fears to which the English archbishops have given expression. In the first place, the declaration of the dogma has changed nothing in principle in the Catholic ideology as it has ex­isted for more than a thousand years; and in the second place, the failure to understand that God has eternally wanted to become man, and for that purpose continually incarnates through the Holy Ghost in the temporal sphere, is an alarming symptom and can only mean that the Protestant standpoint has lost ground by not understanding the signs of the times and by ignoring the continued operation of the Holy Ghost. It is obviously out of touch with the tremendous archetypal happenings in the psyche of the individual and the masses, and with the symbols which are intended to compensate the truly apocalyptic world situation today. (181) It seems to have succumbed to a species of rationalistic historicism and to have lost any understanding of the Holy Ghost who works in the hidden places of the soul. It can therefore neither understand nor admit a further revelation of the divine drama.

This circumstance has given me, a layman in things theological, cause to put forward my views on these dark matters. My attempt is based on the psychological experience I have harvested during the course of a long life. I do not underestimate the psyche in any respect whatsoever, nor do I imagine for a moment that psychic happenings vanish into thin air by being explained. Psychologism represents a still primitive mode of magical thinking, with the help of which one hopes to conjure the reality of the soul out of existence, after the manner of the “Proktophantasmist” in Faust: 

Are you still here? Nay, it’s a thing unheard.
            Vanish at once! We’ve said the enlightening word.

 One would be very ill advised to identify me with such a childish standpoint. However, I have been asked so often whether I believe in the existence of God or not that I am somewhat concerned lest I be taken for an adherent of “psychologism” far more commonly than I suspect. What most people overlook or seem unable to understand is the fact that I regard the psyche as real. They believe only in physical facts, and must consequently come to the conclu­sion that either the uranium itself or the laboratory equipment created the atom bomb. That is no less absurd than the assumption that a non-real psyche is responsible for it. God is an obvious psychic and non-physical fact, i.e., a fact that can be established psychically but not physically. Equally, these people have still not got it into their heads that the psychology of religion falls into two categories, which must be sharply distinguished from one another: firstly, the psychology of the religious person, and secondly, the psychology of religion proper, i.e., of religious contents.

It is chiefly my experiences in the latter field which have given me the courage to enter into the discussion of the religious question and especially into the pros and cons of the dogma of the Assumption—which, by the way, I consider to be the most important religious event since the Reformation. it is a petra scandali for the unpsychological mind: how can such an unfounded assertion as the bodily reception of the Virgin into heaven be put forward as worthy of belief? But the method which the Pope uses in order to demonstrate the truth of the dogma makes sense to the psychological mind, because it bases itself firstly on the necessary prefigurations, and secondly on a tradition of religious assertions reaching back for more than a thousand years. Clearly, the material evidence for the existence of this psychic phenomenon is more than sufficient. It does not matter at all that a physically impossible fact is asserted, because all religious assertions are physical impossibilities. If they were not so, they would, as I said earlier, necessarily be treated in the textbooks of natural science. But religious statements without exception have to do with the reality of the psyche and not with the reality of physis. What outrages the Protestant standpoint in par­ticular is the boundless approximation of the Deipara to the Godhead and, in consequence, the endangered su­premacy of Christ, from which Protestantism will not budge. In sticking to this point it has obviously failed to consider that its hymnology is full of references to the “heavenly bridegroom,” who is now suddenly supposed not to have a bride with equal rights. Or has, perchance, the “bridegroom,” in true psychologistic manner, been under­stood as a mere metaphor?

The logical consistency of the papal declaration cannot be surpassed, and it leaves Protestantism with the odium of being nothing but a man’s religion which allows no meta­physical representation of woman. In this respect it is simi­lar to Mithraism, and Mithraism found this prejudice very much to its detriment. Protestantism has obviously not given sufficient attention to the signs of the times which point to the equality of women. But this equality requires to be metaphysically anchored in the figure of a “divine” woman, the bride of Christ. Just as the person of Christ cannot be replaced by an organization, so the bride cannot be replaced by the Church. The feminine, like the mascu­line, demands an equally personal representation.

The dogmatizing of the Assumption does not, however, according to the dogmatic view, mean that Man has attained ­the status of a goddess, although, as mistress of heaven (as opposed to the prince of the sublunary aerial realm, Satan) and mediatrix, she is functionally on a par with Christ, the king and mediator. At any rate her position satisfies the need of the archetype. The new dogma expresses a renewed hope for the fulfillment of that yearning for peace which stirs deep down in the soul, and for a resolution of the threatening tension between the opposites. Everyone shares this tension and everyone experiences it in his individual form of unrest, the more so the less he sees any possibility of getting rid of it by rational means. It is no wonder, therefore, that the hope, indeed, the expectation of divine intervention arises in the collective unconscious and at the same time in the masses. The papal declaration has given comforting expression to this yearning. How could Protestantism so completely miss the point? This lack of understanding can only be explained by the fact that the dogmatic symbols and hermeneutic allegories have lost their meaning for Protestant rationalism. This is also true, in some measure, of the opposition to the new dogma within the Catholic Church itself, or rather to the dogmatization of the old doctrine. Naturally, a certain degree of rationalism is better suited to Protestantism than it is to the Catholic outlook. The latter gives the archetypal sym­bolisms the necessary freedom and space in which to develop over the centuries while at the same time insisting on their original form, unperturbed by intellectual difficulties and the objections of rationalists. In this way the Catholic Church demonstrates her maternal character, because she allows the tree growing out of her matrix to develop according to its own laws. Protestantism, in contrast, is committed to the paternal spirit. Not only did it develop, at the outset, from an encounter with the worldly spirit of the times, but it continues this dialectic with the spiritual currents of every age; for the pneuma, in keeping with its original wind nature, is flexible, ever in living motion, comparable now to water, now to fire. It can desert its original haunts, can even go astray and get lost, if it succumbs too much to the spirit of the age. In order to fulfill its task, the Protestant spirit must be full of unrest and occasionally troublesome; it must even be revolutionary, so as to make sure that tradition has an influence on the change of contemporary values. The shocks it sustains during this encounter modify and at the same time enliven the tradition, which in its slow progress through the centuries would, without these disturbances, finally arrive at complete petrifaction and thus lose its effect. By merely criticiz­ing and opposing certain developments within the Catholic Church, Protestantism would gain only a miserable bit of vitality, unless, mindful of the fact that Christianity consists of two separate camps, or rather, is a disunited brother-sister pair, it remembers that besides defending its own existence it must acknowledge Catholicism’s right to exist too. A brother who for theological reasons wanted to cut the thread of his elder sister’s life would rightly be called inhuman—to say nothing of Christian charity—and the converse is also true. Nothing is achieved by merely negative criticism. It is justified only to the degree that it is creative. Therefore it would seem profitable to me if, for example, Protestantism admitted that it is shocked by the new dogma not only because it throws a distressing light on the gulf between brother and sister, but because, for fundamental reasons, a situation has developed within Christianity which removes it further than ever from the sphere of worldly understanding. Protestantism knows, or could know, how much it owes its very existence to the Catholic Church. How much or how little does the Protestant still possess if he can no longer criticize or protest? In view of the intellectual skandalon which the new dogma represents, he should remind himself of his Christian responsibility— ”Am I my brother’s (or in this case, my sis­ter’s) keeper?”—and examine in all seriousness the reasons, explicit or otherwise, that decided the declaration of the new dogma. In so doing, he should guard against casting cheap aspersions and would do well to assume that there is more in it than papal arbitrariness. It would be desirable for the Protestant to understand that the new dogma has placed upon him a new responsibility toward the worldly spirit of our age, for he cannot simply deny his problematical sister before the eyes of the world. He must, even if he finds her antipathetic, be fair to her if he does not want to lose his self-respect. For instance, this is a favourable opportunity for him to ask himself, for a change, what is the meaning not only of the new dogma but of all more or less dogmatic assertions over and above their literal concretism. Considering the arbitrary and protean state of his own dogmas, and the pre­carious, schism-riven condition of his Church, he cannot afford to remain rigid and impervious to the spirit of the age. And since, in accordance with his obligations to the Zeitgeist, he is more concerned to come to terms with the world and its ideas than with God, it would seem clearly indicated that, on the occasion of the entry of the Mother of God into the heavenly bridal-chamber, he should bend to the great task of reinterpreting all the Christian traditions. If it is a question of truths which are anchored deep in the soul—and no one with the slightest insight can doubt this fact—then the solution of this task must be possible. For this we need the freedom of the spirit, which, as we know, is assured only in Protestantism. The dogma of the Assumption is a slap in the face for the historical and rationalistic view of the world, and would remain so for all time if one were to insist obstinately on the argu­ments of reason and history. This is a case, if ever there was one, where psychological understanding is needed, because the mythologem coming to light is so obvious that we must be deliberately blinding ourselves if we cannot see its symbolic nature and interpret it in symbolic terms.

The dogmatization of the Assumptio Mariae points to the hieros gamos in the pleroma, and this in turn implies, as we have said, the future birth of the divine child, who, in accordance with the divine trend towards incarnation, will choose as his birthplace the empirical man. The metaphysical process is known to the psychology of the un­conscious as the individuation process. In so far as this process, as a rule, runs its course unconsciously as it has from time immemorial, it means no more than that the acorn becomes an oak, the calf a cow, and the child an adult. But if the individuation process is made conscious, consciousness must confront the unconscious and a balance between the opposites must be found. As this is not pos­sible through logic, one is dependent on symbols which make the irrational union of opposites possible. They are produced spontaneously by the unconscious and are ampli­fied by the conscious mind. The central symbols of this process describe the self, which is man’s totality, consist­ing on the one hand of that which is conscious to him, and on the other hand of the contents of the unconscious. The self is the teleioV anqrwpoV ,* "the whole man", whose symbols are the divine child and its synonyms. This is only a very summary sketch of the process, but it can be observed at any time in modern man, or one can read about it in the documents of Hermetic philosophy from the Middle Ages. The parallelism between the symbols is astonishing to anyone who knows both the psychology of the unconscious and alchemy.

The difference between the “natural” individuation process, which runs its course unconsciously, and the one which is consciously realized, is tremendous. In the first case consciousness nowhere intervenes; the end remains as dark as the beginning. In the second case so much darkness comes to light that the personality is permeated with light, and consciousness necessarily gains in scope and insight. The encounter between conscious and unconscious has to ensure that the light which shines in the darkness is not only comprehended by the darkness, but comprehends it. The filius solis et lunae is the symbol of the union of opposites as well as the catalyst of their union. It is the alpha and omega of the process, the mediator and intermedius. “It has a thousand names,” say the alchemists, meaning that the source from which the individuation process rises and the goal towards which it aims is nameless, ineffable.

It is only through the psyche that we can establish that God acts upon us, but we are unable to distinguish whether these actions emanate from God or from the unconscious. We cannot tell whether God and the unconscious are two different entities. Both are borderline concepts for transcendental contents. But empirically it can be established, with a sufficient degree of probability, that there is in the unconscious an archetype of wholeness which manifests itself spontaneously in dreams, etc., and a tendency, inde­pendent of the conscious will, to relate other archetypes to this center. Consequently, it does not seem improbable that the archetype of wholeness occupies as such a central position which approximates it to the God-image. The similarity is further borne out by the peculiar fact that the archetype symbolism which has always characterized and expressed the Deity. These facts make possible a certain qualification of our above thesis concerning the indistinguishableness of God and the unconscious. Strictly speaking, the God-image does not coincide with the unconscious as such, but with a special content of it, namely the archetype of the self. It is this archetype from which we can no longer distinguish the God-image empirically. We can arbitrarily postulate a difference between these two entities, but that does not help us at all. On the contrary, it only helps us to separate man from God, and prevents God from becoming man. Faith is certainly right when it impresses on man’s mind and heart how infinitely far away and inaccessible God is; but it also teaches his nearness, his immediate presence, and it is just this nearness which has to be empirically real if it is not to lose all significance. Only that which acts upon me do I recognize as real and actual. But that which has no effect upon me might as well not exist. The religious need longs for wholeness, and therefore lays hold of the images of wholeness offered by the unconscious, which, independently of the conscious mind, rise up from the depths of our psychic nature.

__________________________________________________________________

notes 

181. The papal rejection of psychological symbolism may be explained by the fact that the Pope is primarily concerned with the reality of metaphysical happenings. Owing to the undervaluation of the psyche that everywhere prevails, every attempt at adequate psychological understanding is immediately suspected of psychologism. It is understandable that dogma must be protected from this danger. If, in physics, one seeks to explain the nature of light, nobody expects that as a result there will be no light. But in the case of psychology everybody believes that what it explains is explained away. However, I cannot expect that my particular deviationist point of view could be known in any competent quarter. 

Jesus taught in parables, and (as is so common of products of his time: read Philo etc.) was also a parable.  Does that take away from from any wisdom one might find in his tale? Why? Must he be the only tale allowed?

Consider this: Some thousands of years from now, when the grass has grown up and covered the interstates, after books have been burned, and people and whole civilizations have been forgotten, what if some copy of Tolkien's work persists--hidden below sands or in a crevice--and Frodo is thought to be real, and the Return of the King becomes a literal lost King sought to the point of desperation and obsession, onto madness and destruction and loss of the conscious moment...

Extrapolate. Forward. Backward. Now. 

The clutching misogynistic mantis. It doesn't have to be like this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

aside:

Below, the article here and Gibson's movie as well: an interesting take on defending the literal and an illustration of what Jung was speaking of re typology and religion in the excerpt Jung above.

27 March 2004 Belfast Telegraph 
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/story.jsp?story=505611

related -- a letter from ao:

Twice on J-F, the Holy Spirit is referred to as "he", which is the RC
assumption, but this causes a profound confusion.

Jung has pointed out that the Trinity was originally God the Father, the Son,
and HAGIA SOPHIA. Which I assume to have been conveniently mistranslated into
Spiritus Sanctus, which takes a Masculine ! pronoun. This renders the triune
Godhead all masculine............

'Hagia Sophia' is Holy Wisdom in Greek. She is Wisdom in the Old Testament.
Spiritus Sanctus is Latin. It shld have been "Sapienta Sancta' but by the
mistrans, the feminine was lost n put on the Virgin Mary. And no one
questions her IQ, bec the early ch fathers wanted a sweet, docile, compassiuonate figure. Again, the archetypal goddesses that preceded the BVM were powerful as well as feminine. Mary was a mysterious n loving mortal. Immaculately conceived. And as some authors have pointed out puts RC women in a dillemma bec it is
impossible to be a good virgin and a good mother simultaneously. And this may
be the bind that the church uses to keep women fr the priesthood.

But Sophia is not banished fr the Greek Orthodox church n is called the
'Theotokos' the God-bearer, wh psycholog hints at her process being wh Jung
calls the inner Christification.

In Russian mystical writing, Sophia's motto is 'ego coniungo' - I unite. [the
surrendered ego n the Divine Guest, Jung's 'Self'?] In the diagram of the
mandala of the psyche, she = the radius, the Only Way [process!} that all the
avatars are witness to.

The Holy Spirit is also termed in Greek, the Paraclete, wh means Comforter.

There is among scholars a theory that when an areligious archetype is banned,
it takes refuge in fairy tales. What benign fem figure appears to help the
young hero[ine], mediating between visible/invisible worlds, always giving
practical advice?

The Fairy God-mother! The theo-tokos. The process that gives us inner rebirth!

Jung points out that the only hint left in the RC church is the Dove n the
seven doves = the 7 gifts of Wisdom. The dove has always been a feminine
symbol.

The title of my book THE DOVE IN THE STONE comes from a Hermetic Treatise.
The alchemists wld have been doomed as heretics for suggesting that matter
[mater-mother] was also holy.

One last comment, when Protestants threw out Mary from their churches, they
made things even worse! Historians have pointed out that it is largely
Protestant nations that have been industrialized, where the agricultural nations
have retained either Mary or a feminine wisdom goddess. This coincides w/the
impact of climate: northern/southern.

Jung also adds somewhere in a delightful footnote, that in the USA, this
might explain the need for Cherry Queens, Miss America pageants etc. :]

I'm condensing a lot here! But here is a quote fr Erich Neumann's THE GREAT
MOTHER:

"The feminine vessel as vessel of rebirth and higher transformation
becomes Sophia and the Holy Ghost. It, not only, like the Gnostic 'krater',
receives that which is to be transformed, in order to spiritualize and deify
it, but is also the power that nourishes what has been transormed and reborn."

He also points out that Sophia is a transcendent archetype, the highest
octave of the feminine, and as Toni has so generously quoted fr the OT, the
co-creator.

The process of 'mother' is to give form to life. This expl why we have the
conflation the world over of Father God n Mother Nature. And as Nature is not
only beautiful but geometrically organized to a wondrous degree, Mother
Goddesses are goddesses of wisdom.

The Comforter is always present in our in-tuition, uniting the outer n the
inner, teaching us that the sacred can also be found in the commonplace.

phew!

love

ao

ps - as I have the Moon in Virgo, I am very partial personally to the Virgin
Mary. I find the similarity of Isis holding the baby Horus, the beautiful
paintings of Mary n baby Jesus, the Black Madonnas deeply affecting, to say
nothing of the gorgeous music she has inspired. I even tune in to the
Catholic reciting of the Rosary occasionally bec it is so like the Hindu mantras n the
mala beads. And I find that Mary n Sophia are often linked. There is a tradition
that St. Anne, mother of Mary, is a stand-in for Sophia. Anne means Grace. So
that hints that Grace n Wisdom are related.

Finally - a philo-sopher is a lover of Sophia. He is looking for that Stone n
Sophia, the Dove is hiding, giggling, IN the stone!
 

more letters

and an excerpt from Couliano's The Tree of Gnosis.

btw, this exorcism really began with a dream.

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"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
-George Orwell
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