Thank you for this wonderful essay, Catherine! I can certainly appreciate the fact that the hero’s adventure does not speak to everyone. James Hillman certainly wrote much about how this type of imagining does not always apprehend the world in a nuanced way. Recently, there was a wonderful movie which, in my opinion, explored this to be certain degree – The Green Knight. I wrote some reflections on this movie, one of them being the following:

The darkness in the movie and the deep flaws in Gawain reveal that such can be an immense reservoir of strength – a source of will which enables one to carry on – to persist in the “game” instead of abandoning it. It is not strength and virtue, but weakness and deep shame which fuel Gawain’s movement forward to a fate, as he sees it, of certain death, all in the name of “honor.” One wonders, though, if the movie reflects, not the end of the magic and possibilities of Camelot, but the eyes which view the movie, for the hero’s journey and the medieval period’s values may no longer speak to us. Perhaps, Arthur and Guinevere are seen as old and long past their prime because the myth is old and no longer resonates with us. Joseph Campbell felt the individual quest was the best and most authentic image of Western spirituality, but perhaps this is not as widely applicable as he thought (e.g., issues of gender – the heroine’s journey; James Hillman and Archetypal Psychology’s view that the hero may no longer be the appropriate imagining for our time, etc.).

As you well know, there is a fairytale entitled Der Geist im Glas (The Spirit in the Bottle), one of Grimm’s fairytales, where the spirit in the bottle names himself as Mercurius. Mercurius is a figure of medieval and modern Latin alchemy and exhibits many of the characteristics of the trickster even in this fairytale. What is fascinating is that he has been imprisoned in a particularly human creation – a bottle. And as powerful as he is, he cannot free himself, but must be freed by someone else. Crucially, such a freeing is seen as being exceedingly dangerous. This image of hermetic enclosure is very much worth reflecting on. On the one hand, Mercurius is seen to pose great danger and, consistent with the trickster, is held to be largely unconscious. On the other hand, when freed, he gives a reward that both physically heals and creates riches.

When seen through the lens of certain depth psychology traditions, the imprisoning of Mercurius is seen as correct. The bottle as transparent might be thought of as a sort of psychological enclosure comprising the tradition’s discipline, the employment of careful observation, and the isolation, both from inside and from outside influences, of that dangerous spirit. Here, the freeing of Mercurius is seen as an incorrect solution, both alchemically and psychologically. On the other hand, there are other traditions of depth psychology which see the enclosure as being necessary, but crucially inclusive of both the psychological tradition and Mercurius. The freeing of Mercurius, then, is the freeing of this spirit in the hermetic enclosure in which the depth psychology is also held. Thus, the discipline and focus (i.e., the enclosure) are maintained, but both Mercurius and depth psychology intermingle such that the psychological tradition is also affected and also undergoes change. This approach permits a far more intimate relationship with the trickster with its inherent dangers and life-giving boon, but again, all requiring the discipline (conscious attention and focus) the image of the bottle expresses.

As you know, Orphic theogony is different from Ovid’s theogony in Metamorphosis and, of course, Hesiod’s Theogony. It is based on the writings of singer, musician, poet, and prophet Orpheus, the legendary founder of the mystery tradition of Orphism [to be accurate, there are a number of Orphic theogonies whose creation spans from the 5th century BC to the 6th century AD, working with which involves us in a great deal of complexity]. In one of these Orphic theogonies, the firstborn god and the primordial god (protogenos) of creation is Phanes whose name means “bring to light” or “make appear” and comes from the Greek verbs phanaô and phainô. In the Orphic texts, Phanes is variously described as a “beautiful, golden-winged, hermaphroditic deity wrapped in the coils of a serpent,” a “beautiful, a figure of shining light, with golden wings on his shoulders, four eyes, and the heads of various animals,” and the Firstborn god who is “the two-​bodied god, is both male and female, has golden wings on his shoulders, heads of bulls on his sides, and on his head is a serpent that changes into the shapes of different beasts.”

The various Orphic theogonies describe Phanes as being hatched from the world-egg. In one theogony, there are described three triads:

The first triad (Intelligible Being) with the water, the mud, and Chronos from whom being first became intelligible; the second triad (Intelligible Life) with Aither, Chaos, and Erebus, described as “nebulous,” the power from which life sprung; and the third triad (Intelligible Intellect) with the egg as both male and female and the hermaphrodite Phanes, through whom life is dispersed into the lower levels of the Neoplatonic metaphysical system.

According to Orphic Fragment #89, Orpheus affirms that Phanes “is the Parent of all the Gods, on whose account He framed the heaven, and provided for His children that they might have a habitation and place of abode in common.” In Orphic Fragment #65, Phanes is part of the trinity which includes Mitis and Irikæpaios which are really one power and the strength of one God whom no one can see. This one power is ineffable, and from it, all came into being, both that which is perceptible and that which is unseen. And in Orphic Fragment #82, Orpheus is said to link the God Phanes to that of the intellect and the intelligible:

Unfolding into light the intelligible unities; and gives to it various forms, as exhibiting in itself the first cause of intelligible animals. He also inserts in it multiform ideas, as primarily comprehending intelligible ideas, and calls it the key of intellect, because it bounds every intelligible essence, and connectedly-contains intellectual life.

Thus, from an Orphic perspective, it is the intellect and the intelligible which comes first, qualities which, in my opinion, need to be the first ones applied to this case of Will Smith.

I have seen many attempts to see this incident in terms of myth and in terms of depth psychology, attempts which use everything except what I feel is most appropriate to this incident – and that is the literal interpretation of the events. Before I read the comments of author and social critic Fran Lebowitz with which I largely agree, I was asking others to consider the possibility that he was fully conscious of what he was doing. Because, it didn’t seem to me that there was any eruption from the unconscious which would make him lose control. It seemed to me that he was in full control and might have fully intended to do what he did. And I was completely unconvinced that he did any of this to ‘defend’ his wife. This was why when reading analyses having to do with the powerful influence of the unconscious, I felt they were giving Will Smith a pass. Quite frankly, that angered me.

Now, Fran Lebowitz’s comments are absolutely spot on. She wrote:

Will Smith was well aware that he was on television. It’s not like he lost his temper or something because there was too much time between those two things. He didn’t jump up right away, he sat there at first, he laughed, though I’m sure he didn’t think it was funny. Everyone knows, if you’re sitting there, there’s a high chance you’re on TV and that is why, when they announce the winners, they shoot to the audience and they show the losers, and all the losers know that they’re being shot and they smile and they applaud, even though they’re thinking, ‘I should’ve won!’

It’s not the first time someone got angry at a joke, but it was outrageous to me that he did that, it was outrageous to me that they let him sit there, but most outrageous was that self-serving, self-regarding speech that he made, with the tears — which were for himself — and the way that he talked about himself, which is not uncommon in Hollywood. … That speech was ridiculous and outrageous.

A lot of people tell me that when Will Smith got up, they thought it was a bit, but I didn’t. I knew that he was going to hit him because I could see by the way he was walking that it was real. I also could see — and I hate to use the word ‘thought’ in regard to whatever went through his mind, such as it is — but he knew he was going to do it, and it seemed pretty clear to me that Chris didn’t, because naturally it’s really unusual for someone to get up and hit someone during the Oscars.

I mean, just think about this – Will Smith has been an exceedingly popular actor and public figure for at least 3 decades. He has long been under intense public scrutiny and he has played roles which have garnered him both admirers and detractors. He has also done some pretty bad things which will result in big criticism (e.g., his treatment of Janet Hubert). So, with all of that experience of intense scrutiny, horrid and unfair judgements, etc., do we really think he lost it at one of the most visible forums in the world? Really?

Sometimes, we have to consider that the literal and the mundane yield a far better and more accurate picture of the unfolding of a given set of events.

Mark – thank you for this! My response:

I also see boundaries, as illusory as they are, in the context of meditation, but especially meditations which unfold over long periods of time (e.g., centuries). As with any boundary, its degree of clarity can be purposive (beyond the practicality of watchmaking) and in serving as such, has its benefits and its detriments. Clear demarcations can be exceedingly helpful, especially in generating energy based on the tension which can result. As much suffering as the (artificial) split between psyche and matter beginning in the late 17th century caused, it led to immense development in certain areas and, perhaps more importantly, it led to a certain liberation (e.g., the liberation or emancipation from the perceptible, the tangible, the visibly limitable). And in preparation for writing a series of notes on my review of and response to James Hillman’s paper The Measure of Events: Proclus’ Proposition 117 in the View of an Archetypal Psychology, I worked with two and a half millennia of the history of mathematics and science and found evidence that the unconscious itself appeared to be supportive of and energizing the split in favor of abstraction and the striving for the infinite. Crucially, there was a very real readiness for Descartes’ position (as opposed, for example, to Leibniz’ position). However, as I hinted at in my previous response, we are reaching its limits, the exhaustion of its possibilities, resulting in The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man.

In my note The Abyss and The Alchemical Vessel, I explore our coming to the abyss in terms of five specific examples of limits:

• A. Decidability in mathematics
• B. Computability in computer science
• C. Complementarity in quantum physics
• D. Non-locality in quantum physics
• E. Quantum entanglement

Let me focus on decidability, which is the application of a given mathematical system to determine if a statement made in the language of that system is true or false in a finite number of steps, one critical mathematical system we’re all familiar with being the axiomatic-deductive system. Kurt Gödel proved, in 1931, that there are statements which can be formed in such a system of a certain power (e.g., the power of Peano’s axioms), assuming the system is consistent (the axioms lead to no contradictions), which can neither be proven true nor proven false in a finite number of steps (i.e., those statements are undecidable). In working with this result as a meditation, what becomes clearer is the fact that mathematical systems are, in fact, provisional (e.g., one can make a stronger mathematical system by adding as an axiom the undecidable statement of the previous mathematical system, or one can change from an axiomatic-deductive mathematical system to something different). In other words, such can weaken the view that mathematics has “God status.”

On the other hand, as a person who has worked with Number theory, both in mathematics proper and in depth psychology, it is very difficult to see the rules followed by the Natural numbers as not being pre-existent. I am appreciative of, for example, cognitive science’s approach (e.g., the book Where Mathematics Comes From: How The Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being by George Lakoff and Rafael Nuñez) to showing how mathematics was created, but I am simply left unconvinced, especially given the rather startling results in Number theory which don’t seem to be addressed in such works. But, while it is amazing that different cultures across vast distances of time and geography arrived at the same mathematical laws for certain areas, I am also very open to the crucial differences in how each culture sees and employs mathematics, one new discipline for this being ethnomathematics. Furthermore, I am open to those who view infinite mathematical objects as being problematic and sticking to only that part of mathematics which can be constructed. Such heightens the consciousness of the benefits and detriments of seeing mathematics as eternal in the Platonic sense. But, from a depth psychology perspective, it is understandable how Jung, his closest collaborator Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz, and physics Nobel laureate Dr. Wolfgang Pauli, came to see the Natural numbers as (psychoid) archetypes of order, the simplest of the archetypes. One advantage to seeing them this way is that it offers a neutral language which could facilitate a deeper collaboration between depth psychology and the hard sciences.

You wrote “Now, since the originals are themselves probabilistic, any deductions that follow from them also end up as contingent — but they aren’t always treated that way.” I agree with this. However, I want to espouse some of the benefits of certainty. I have found that, while contingency is good, it can be exceedingly difficult to navigate in this way (this is shared with the difference in living between objective truths and truths realized individually). My concern is that too much emphasis on contingency can sometimes depotentiate moving forward; de-energize the entire process, especially during stressful periods of doubt and frustration. Certainty, though illusory and though it can be problematic, in its best moments, can energize the movement beyond seemingly impenetrable hurdles.

Finally, let us consider another benefit of fixed and clear distinctions – safety. You brought up Jung’s statement of organized religion being a defense against religious experience. Crucially, sometimes this is absolutely necessary! Real religious experience can be absolutely horrifying and can completely overcome and shatter the individual. This possibility is why Jung was quite careful as to whom he recommended the path of individuation. For those who were not psychologically mature, he would recommend they stay with their organized religion (he would also recommend this for those whose religion served as a proper container of their psychological needs). Only those who were psychologically mature and could endure such powerful religious experiences would he recommend individuation. Just think of the Swiss Saint Niklaus von Flüe popularly known as Brother Klaus. He was a family man until, as Jung wrote, he “saw the head of a human figure with a terrifying face, full of wrath and threats.” As a result of that single experience, Brother Klaus spent many years of the most strenuous spiritual effort in a monastery working through this experience. Jung himself, after his break with Freud in 1913, went through an exceedingly dangerous spiritual emergency which required him to spend the rest of his life working through (“to give birth to the old in a new time”). Precious few can do this kind of work, and sometimes when such experiences are thrust upon a person, a (temporary) defense can be certainty, at least about certain things, which allows the safer channeling of the immense energies involved in those experiences.

In this discussion of image, myth, and the admonition to “stick to the image,” I think we are very much in danger of losing our way here. Let us begin with the notion and experience of the “image.” The image is not of our own creation, not something contrived, not even something that connects individual pieces which may themselves be images. Images come from (if that is a reasonable notion) the unknown – their emergence is a deep and profound mystery. We can experience them, we can recognize them, we can be gripped by them, we can be entirely overpowered by them, but we know neither their true nature nor their true origin (if those are knowable things). Images emerge whole and are of infinite complexity, the revealing of which would thus entail an infinite process. They are of infinite dimension, infinite self-similarity, holographic being a modern ways of speaking of them. And if meaning is to be ascribed to them, their meanings are infinite. All of this is why Jung and others can say that the image has everything it needs within itself.

I expand on the image in this way because we are dealing with the advice to “stick to the image,” advice that, as I mentioned earlier, long predates us. Crucially, this advice is specific to the image and is justified because of the properties we see the image as possessing. Sticking to the image makes a lot of sense when we carefully consider what the image is. However, and this is critical, this movie is not an image! It may contain images, connected in some way, but it itself is not an image. This movie is largely contrived, its development being a product of great deliberation and planning, the choice of images and symbols done deliberately with due reflection. The movie, then, is not infinitely self-similar – not of infinite complexity and depth of meaning. When this movie undergoes analysis and reflection, it quickly decomposes into pieces instead of maintaining its wholeness. Crucially, the movie does NOT have everything it needs within itself, and this is part of the reason why both internal and external reflections are necessary and also why immense caution must be taken when considering the film. Sticking to the image is not particularly beneficial to such a contrivance. Sticking to the image with such contrivances often results merely in bringing in our own beliefs and ideas instead of revealing what is contained within the contrivance.

Now, when we see images in such a contrivance, their experience and, if one employs this process, their interpretation are done very differently than if they had emerged in a true image (e.g., a dream, vision, etc.). For their meaning in the movie is largely dependent on the consciousness of the movie’s creators. In the movie, they often serve as signs, not symbols. So when we see what we think are Christian images in the movie, their meaning would need to be informed by the particular perspectives and specific choices made by the movie’s creators, something which would require quite a bit of research to reveal if we are not to rely on mere guesswork. On the other hand, were we to describe our own (subjective) experiences of the movie, we would have to include our own understanding of the Christian myth. Crucially, then, we need to recognize the fundamental distinction between finding Christian images in the movie and bringing our own interpretation to those images based upon our understanding of the Christian myth. This is part of the reason great care must be taken here.

Now, let us consider the figure of Christ and the image of the Last Supper and assume our interest is in communicating our personal experience of the film rather than what the film means (again, were we interested in the latter, we would need to do research on what the movie’s creators intended by using those images). Here, it is possible that we are bringing our own interpretation of the Christian myth to bear. It may also be the case that we are more reflective and consider different imaginings of the Christ figure (beyond our own beliefs), imaginings which would likely lead to different interpretations of the image of the Last Supper. All of these, then, could be used in describing one’s own experiences of the film. Crucially, one’s experience of the film varies depending on the imaginings of its images. In other words, I can imagine the images in one way and note my experience of the film, and then imagine the images in a different way and note my resulting experiences of the film with those changes. This was precisely why I offered a different imagining of the Christ figure than the one presented in this thread, namely the imagining of the ancient Gnostics. Such an imagining, of course, is not meant to assert anything about truth or correctness. However, it is clear that one experiences the film in very different ways depending on how one imagines the images.

Now, let me address the issue of “psychologistic reduction of Christ as a symbol of a personal individuation.” Fortunately, this was not done in this thread. Crucially, there is a fundamental distinction between the historical figure of Christ and how Christ was experienced over the millennia. When we consider, as the ancient Gnostics had, Christ as an example of living an authentic life, we are really saying absolutely nothing about Christ himself. Instead, we are speaking of a particular experience of Christ, based on a specific reflections on those experiences. Or we are speaking of a particular imagining of Christ, again something exceedingly different from Christ himself.

I should emphasize here that it was the ancient Gnostics who saw the life of Christ and its purpose as an example of an authentic life, a view that was shared by others over the two millennia that separates modern times from the existence of Gnosticism in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. Just because modern depth psychology sees this as a valid experience of Christ does not mean that by doing so it has thereby psychologized Christ. And there is a fundamental distinction between holding the process of individuation as a parallel to Christ’s life and psychologically reducing Christ as a symbol of personal individuation. Depth psychology has often been unfairly criticized for reducing God to (mere) psychological concepts. This is largely because there is a failure to read the original materials carefully with reflection, materials which emphasize explicitly and/or implicitly that depth psychology can only speak to the experience of that which has been called God and cannot speak about the Unknowable (God) itself.

I should also say that Christ (and Buddha) as example were specifically discussed in Jung’s own confrontation with the unconscious. It is part of Philemon’s Sermons in 1916 and is part of further discussions among Philemon, the Emissary (Jung’s Soul), and Jung after those Sermons. All of this is experienced directly and is expressed in the Black Books in a language which is not of an academic or psychological character. This is before the relevant psychological concepts had been developed after years of reflection and practice. The subsequent characterization as Christ being the symbol of the Self and an example of individuation came much later and represents a scholarly expression of an originally conscious/unconscious dialogue held primarily during the years 1916-1922. Thus, before this characterization of Christ in depth psychology was done, it had already taken form in the initial centuries after Christ and had, in modern times, taken form in the dialogical relationship Jung had established with the unconscious. And, again, even where depth psychology discussed Christ and individuation, we are talking about a parallel – a modern way of understanding Christ’s life and the experience of Christ. We are in no way reducing Christ’s life to mere psychological concepts.

I would also like to address the exceedingly odd notion of “privatization of the collective power of myth for one’s own ego-centric desires.” This statement, it seems to me, is entirely void of actual experience. For, there are examples of where one has followed a collective myth and succeeded in the goal they set out to achieve. Milarepa is an example of one who participated in a collective myth and successfully achieved enlightenment. Sri Ramakrishna is another example of one who decided to, after he had achieved his own spiritual enlightenment, follow the collective myth of Christ. In the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, it is said there that Ramakrishna experimented and followed Christ’s life and had experienced what Christ had achieved. This certainly was not done for his own egocentric desire, but instead confirmed to him that Christianity was a valid spiritual path.

I should say here that the collective myth of Christ as example is akin to a major theme in Campbell’s beloved Arthurian myths and literature – that of the individual quest and of the Grail. One lives the myth of the individual quest, not for egocentric desire, but in order to live out one’s deepest being, and in doing so, achieve the Grail. The individual path/quest is a major theme in Campbell’s fourth volume of the “Masks of God” series entitled Creative Mythology, this volume being his magnum opus in my opinion. Interestingly enough, Dr. Ann Casement argues that the search for the Soul in Jung’s Red Book is precisely the quest for the Grail. Thus, when we speak of the “privatization of the collective power of myth,” we need to be exceedingly careful and nuanced in our judgement as to whether or not that entailed an “egocentric desire.” Crucially, that is not a necessary property of “privatizing the collective power of myth.”

Let me end this by saying I am aware of some scholars like Giegerich who argue against things like private or personal meaning, private myth, etc. – more generally, making that which one holds to be collective as private, personal, subjective, and vice-versa. Such a position needs to be deeply reflected upon, likely a lifetime endeavor. Having begun my reading of the Gnostic works (which support personal meaning and knowing oneself as a path) when they were first published in the late 1970s, and with my contrary experience in my practice of Tibetan Buddhism and reading of Advaita Vedanta (which support universal themes), I have an experiential sense of both sides of this issue, but I have not come to any conclusion in my life as to whether either or both exist and whether one needs to make a choice between the two. This, for me, constitutes a lifetime reflection.

Let us consider the image of the Last Supper. While I think it is an extreme stretch to apply this image to the movie, in a way it could work depending on how you see that image. In some imaginings, Christ as redeemer does not do so in the way which is popularly held. He is not the Christ who saves humanity, but is instead the man who embodies the example of how to live life authentically and uniquely. He is the one who has lived his own life and worked through the problems as they have emerged, both psychologically and physically, in his own life. He is the one who has been gripped by the Divine and the Devil – the one who has confronted both and worked out a solution to both – instead of following someone else’s path (which may also be likewise Divine). He is the one who is dealing with the particular challenges/problems of the Age in which he has been born. And he offers the possibility of redemption to us, not by being a hero, but by having set an example of how to live life authentically and responsibly. Crucially, by living an authentic life, one can be led to dismemberment, whether physically or psychologically, something which is shared across the cultures of the world throughout time. The Divine has inspired us in Life, and as we are human-all-too-human, we must experience to the dregs the ultimate culmination of that life, which may be crucifixion. Thus, we see Christ, not in terms of the hero myth or in terms of the “Imitatio Christi” of Thomas à Kempis where imitation is of Christ’s outer life, but instead as a far more nuanced being whom we can imitate on a far deeper level by living, as Christ did, one’s own life and doing so authentically. If we are to see the final scene as relating to the Last Supper, it is as a unique life authentically lived, especially in its last moments, before enduring the crucifixion.

Of course, none of this is meant to say or imply that the crucifixion is a necessary part of the path. Instead, it is meant to recognize that crucifixion may be part of one’s life and, if so, we still must live an authentic life. And one of the great impediments to living an authentic life is the hero and that a hero will save us. Living like there will be a solution to our problems instead of living an authentic life whether there is a solution or not. There is a certain wisdom to Dante’s “Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here.” It is a very soulful saying, one which helps us to find our way in the dark; to learn to see without light. The hero myth can sometimes interfere with living life as it is, especially in dire times. It is the holding on to solving the darkness that is part of the experience of dire circumstances with light instead of learning to see or navigate in the dark. The challenges of life may or may not have solutions. If there are solutions, we must absolutely strive to find them! But, if there are no solutions, we should not live life in despair – we must go on living, not a provisional life in fear, but an authentic life, affirming and embracing Life as it is.

Mythistorian – Recently, I was in a discussion with a wonderful professor of mine at PGI about the ancient problem of squaring the circle. It began because I had posted an article on a recent paper which solves it through the process of equidecomposition, the breaking up of an object into identical potentially complex pieces. The idea is to take as the object a circle, decompose it into equal pieces, and rearrange the pieces such that it forms a square of equal area to the circle. This paper used 10^200 pieces (10 with 200 zeroes after it), each identical peace being exceedingly complicated and very difficult to visualize. In our discussion, I made the distinction between a rational interpretation of the problem and the problem as embodying a true mystery. The original problem posed in the 5th century B.C. took on an entirely rational character, and it turns out it was unsolvable (the additional requirements were that only the Euclidean tools of compass and straightedge could be used, and that the process entailed a finite number of steps), though this was not proven until 1882. Yet there was an intuition of its unsolveability. Thus, eventually it became acquainted with anything thought to be impossible. The medieval and early modern Latin alchemists adopted a less rational interpretation of the problem, one which embraced to a much larger degree the irrational and preserved the far deeper mystery it embodied.

I suppose I see the problem of human-caused climate decline in a similar way – it embodies a profound mystery which is lost if made completely rational. For here there is a parallel between the comet in the movie and climate decline. When the comet becomes visible to the naked eye, it is too late. Likewise, if the problem of climate decline becomes fully visible (i.e., every scientific measure indicates catastrophe), then it is too late – the point of no return has been reached. The visibility and measurability of the problem where cause-effect is completely uncontroversial indicates the problem has fully manifested into the rational sphere and is too late to solve. But, while there is still mystery in the problem where there is an irrational relationship to it, then there is hope.

With respect to the challenges posed by differing agendas and existing power structures which have long history, I think that Naomi Klein’s book entitled This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate (see enclosed link below) is quite excellent. One argument is that those who are pushing for progressive agendas are obfuscating their intentions by using climate decline as their argument for certain actions. And this is a very difficult argument to counter.

I am not sure I agree that simplicity is preferable in all cases. For example, you expressed interest in Giegerich’s work. But he argued that what is required for psychology and for the world more generally is a higher form of thinking or thinking on a higher plain, an approach which is far from being simple. The process of using thinking to accomplish the alchemical dissolution is itself of high complexity. And he feels Hegelian dialectics is the best tool we have, not the easiest approach to learn or use. To be honest, I fully agree with Giegerich here – we do need a higher form of thinking to solve modern problems, psychological or otherwise.

https://books.google.com/books/about/This_Changes_Everything.html?id=kxJ5BAAAQBAJ

mythistorian, some points:

To communicate one’s partiality is certainly important. For example, when publishing research (especially qualitative research), one makes explicit what I call the axioms of research: epistemology, methodology, ontology. One could look at this as a sort of apologetics for one’s partiality. And when doing a doctoral dissertation at PGI, the first section gives even deeper insight into one’s partiality which is essential for evaluating the scholarship of what is contained in the subsequent chapters. I have seen criticism of the inclusion of this section from members of other, more traditional, institutions, but I find this section to be absolutely invaluable. It is critical, however, to note that one can also work to transcend one’s partiality. This is a major practice in certain traditions of Buddhism and of the approach of Advaita Vedanta. One spends a lifetime cultivating such transcendence, even to the point of transcending one’s own Buddhist or Hindu partiality. This is what is implied in Nagarjuna’s final chapter of his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā – “Examination of Views.”

Now, let us apply this to the current dialogue. While looking at the full spectrum of partiality is certainly good, the issue I raised about not reducing your interlocutor’s position to statements of partiality requires that we look at one end of that spectrum, and thus the microscope is an appropriate metaphor. Crucially, it is far more respectful to your interlocutor to ask *why* they have a given view instead of making an assumption about their partiality and insulting them by reducing the complexity of their life experience through which they arrived at that position to unidimensional explanations of partiality. You do great disservice when you do this. It is one thing to communicate one’s understanding of their own partiality, but completely bad form to make assumptions about the partiality of others.

A quick word about ‘meaning’. ‘Meaning’ is not nor should be considered a universal goal or a goal which is desired universally. In my experience in the Eastern traditions, meaning is, at best, held provisionally, and there are other relationships which are more effective in achieving their goals. One extreme which comes to mind is utter dismemberment. One is “destroyed” in an encounter with an image, and this is a necessary experience. Somehow, though, one is put back together – a deep mystery. This is also experienced in shamanic initiations. The specific shamanic tradition I am thinking about was described by Dr. Malidoma Somé in his initiation into the Dagara community in Burkina Faso, West Africa. This initiation is exceedingly dangerous and there have been deaths as a result of it. The challenge Dr. Somé faced was that he was taken from his people at a very young age and forced to have a Western education for ~15 years. Thus, he was far older when he took initiation than normal, and his Western education could severely interfere with the sort of dismemberment endured during initiation. I had the honor and pleasure of having an audience with him in 2014. His aura was very powerful and wonderful, something I have felt only with some highly realized Tibetan Rinpoches. Unfortunately, Dr. Somé passed away very recently.

To be clear, I was not talking about the Kantian understanding of “absolute truth.” I discussed the notion of absolute truth more informally as my exposure to the notion is more variegated and includes multiple traditions. Central to many of them is the notion of absolute truth as conditionless, a notion which does not hold up to rational scrutiny. But, in the formal portion of my statements, I stressed the character of the necessity for a finite number of steps in a given proof in order to contrast this with a dialectic of unending and infinite scale, and this was another reason I brought up Cantor’s levels of infinity beyond which leads to contradiction. Outside of the various traditions of which we are familiar, I just have seen nothing in human experience which, when subject to careful reflection, supports a hypothesis of anything like absolute truth.

The notion of “redeemer of alchemy” is exceedingly problematic to me. Alchemy requires no redemption! What needs redemption is the modern attitude toward the past. The pattern of thinking that holds that later knowledge corrects earlier knowledge is very unhealthy and is, in many ways, utterly destructive. One of the themes I have worked on in the past is contrasting various traditions with respect to the prevailing worldview (or at least the view of Western culture) of improvement (e.g., my note on Affirmation of Decline). Many traditions, even parts of the West, see our current state as one of decline or even in the final stage before the new arises. Thus, the pattern of thinking about current knowledge correcting previous knowledge hardly augers well. I wrote a critique of James Hillman’s paper The Measure of Events: Proclus’ Proposition 117 in the View of an Archetypal Psychology which was about making scientific measure less narrow. Because of the position he took in that paper which seems quite reasonable from an Archetypal Psychology perspective, I felt compelled to go through 2500 years of mathematics and science history. And based on this experience, I cultivated the position that scientific measure is a product of a culture during a particular time of its history. Such a measure embodies a set of beliefs which may not be applicable to other cultures at other times. And when these beliefs are no longer held or if they are misunderstood, the entire judgement on their form of scientific measure which embodies those beliefs can be problematic. Such is the case with medieval and early modern Latin alchemy. It embodies beliefs and perspectives which are no longer held or even understood. Take, for example, the Hermetic notion of the correspondentia. The view of the correspondence between inner and outer, above and below, etc., a view absolutely essential to alchemy, was in the process of being abandoned during the 17th century A.D. Without a proper understanding and appreciation of such views, alchemy looks absolutely ridiculous to our modern eyes. This is why cultivation of an understanding of the views prevalent during the medieval and early modern period is necessary for a reasonable understanding of Latin alchemy. And when this is done, I believe it is clear that alchemy requires no redemption.

When I discussed form and content, I don’t think I described it as a dichotomy. I certainly don’t consider them to express a dichotomy. Instead, I was emphasizing that the realization of their interdependence was very much non-trivial and that mathematics was one of the disciplines which demonstrates this complexity. And form/content was not intended to only be applicable to alchemy, but more generally to the image as a whole. Our relationship with the image is greatly hindered by our lack of understanding and appreciation of the interdependence of form and content which, ideally, could be thought as being one thing. Thus, we sometimes try to extract content from an image without careful attention to its form or by ignoring certain details about its form because it does not serve our purposes. Obviously, the image in general and alchemy in particular constitute a far broader spectrum than form/content, but I intended the simple version of form and content to provide a way of thinking of something relevant yet tractable, something to which we could employ the traditions of logic and mathematics which could lead to a more modern understanding of an ancient mystery. And it was this unity of form and content that lends plausibility recognized by disciplines other than depth psychology to Jung’s statement “Image and meaning are identical; and as the first takes shape, the latter becomes clear.”

As I mentioned in one of my earlier responses, alchemy can and should be approached by multiple disciplines. For example, there are two historians of science who have published excellent work on alchemy – Dr. Lawrence Principe and Dr. William Newman, and they very much disagree with Jung’s hermeneutic. Furthermore, Dr. Principe is a chemist and has provided hard evidence that some of what the alchemists wrote (e.g., certain alchemical recipes) were practical and useful. Specifically, he has reconstructed the intended results on the basis of following the instructions contained in some of the alchemical recipes. Other traditions which have been invaluable to the modern multidisciplinary study of alchemy include history of religion, medieval literature, philology/linguistics and classical languages, chemistry, and of course depth psychology. And it is good to appreciate the immense complexities in those areas where experts in each of these disciplines agree and disagree.

Now, it is very much worth reading a history of how Jung came to commit in the early 1930s to the deep study of alchemy. It was far from being an easy process for Jung, and he was very reluctant to commit to alchemy for many years. But, a combination of inner and outer forces compelled him to this path. An important outer force was that his patients and colleagues were having powerful dreams with alchemical imagery and, in order to help them, Jung had to understand that imagery. A careful reading of Jung’s history, the Black Books, the Red Book, Jung’s work with the traditions of the Gnostics, and his dreams will lend a certain insight into the organic nature his study of and approach to alchemy took. I very much would like to read Jung’s alchemical notebooks because they would provide additional invaluable insights into Jung’s process. But, I mention this because Jung’s work on alchemy must be evaluated relative to that which was driving him and whether he was successful in accomplishing the goals which were set to him. Note that the Black Books unfortunately end in 1932, about 2 years before he began his deep study of alchemy. Thus, unfortunately, we don’t know what the unconscious thinks about his progress. But, one relevant question is whether Jung was able to help his patients with their alchemical dreams because of his work. If so, would this not constitute some support by the unconscious that Jung was on the right track?

You claimed that “Jung could not see the problem of alchemy in terms of logical form or logical status.” I would like to see hard evidence for this. Do you have any? Again. I think it is critical that we evaluate Jung’s approach in relation to what was driving him and what he was tasked to do instead of prematurely collapsing the complexities of what surrounded his work into judgements of incapability.

On a related note, one interesting work by a scholar who earned her doctoral degree in philosophy was entitled Nietzsche and Jung: The Whole Self in the Union of Opposites by Dr. Lucy Huskinson. It is interesting because it contrasts their respective approaches to where the union of opposites comes from. For Jung, it is new (i.e., not part of the opposites) and emerges, deo concedente, from the unconscious. For Nietzsche, it already exists in the opposites – that it is inherent in them. Thus, as Dr. Huskinson argues in her book, for Jung, the Self is discovered; for Nietzsche, the Self is created. The issues she tackles in her book are relevant, I believe, to the contrast between Giegerich’s approach to the coniunctio and Jung’s.

Finally, the work to use our “prejudices” to arrive at higher or deeper truths, of course, is hardly new and goes back much farther than the philosophers being discussed here. It goes back to at least the 2nd century A.D., both in the traditions of the West and those in the East. For the West, this would include the approaches by the ancient Gnostics; in the East, this would be embodied, in part, by the Two Truths which were articulated by the Madhymaka philosophers, but has a long history which precedes them, possibly going back to the time of the Buddha.