The Archetype of the Shadow

[David Guyatt]

I had thought that earlier I had linked a copy AION, but it seems I haven't. So here it is (it's a big 25.6 mb .pdf file) - in order to save bandwidth here, please download directly from Scribd.

Scroll to page 10 to begin.

Aion - Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self.

Aion deals with the phenomenology of the Self in the Christian aeon - a period of approximately 2000 years which coincides with the Platonic month of the fishes (i.e., Pisces).

Rich fruit cake:

Para 76 -78

76 If we see the traditional figure of Christ as a parallel to the psychic manifestation of the self, then the Antichrist would cor-respond to the shadow of the self, namely the dark half of the human totality, which ought not to be judged too optimistically. So far as we can judge from experience, light and shadow are so evenly distributed in man's nature that his psychic totality appears, to say the least of it, in a somewhat murky light. The psychological concept of the self, in part derived from our knowledge of the whole man, but for the rest depicting itself spontaneously in the products of the unconscious as an arche-typal quaternity bound together by inner antinomies, cannot omit the shadow that belongs to the light figure, for without it this figure lacks body and humanity. In the empirical self, light and shadow form a paradoxical unity. In the Christian concept, on the other hand, the archetype is hopelessly split into two irreconcilable halves, leading ultimately to a metaphysical dual-ism the final separation of the kingdom of heaven from the world of the damned.

77 For anyone who has a positive attitude towards Christianity the problem of the Antichrist is a hard nut to crack. It is noth-ing less than the counterstroke of the devil, provoked by God's Incarnation; for the devil attains his true stature as the adver-sary of Christ, and hence of God, only after the rise of Chris-tianity, while as late as the Book of Job he was still one of God's sons and on familiar terms with Yahweh. 24 Psychologically the case is clear, since the dogmatic figure of Christ is so sublime and spotless that everything else turns dark beside it. It is, in fact, so one-sidedly perfect that it demands a psychic comple-ment to restore the balance. This inevitable opposition led very early to the doctrine of the two sons of God, of whom the elder was called Satanael. 25 The coming of the Antichrist is not just a prophetic prediction it is an inexorable psychological law whose existence, though unknown to the author of the Johan-nine Epistles, brought him a sure knowledge of the impending enantiodromia. Consequently he wrote as if he were conscious of the inner necessity for this transformation, though we may be sure that the idea seemed to him like a divine revelation. In reality every intensified differentiation of the Christ-image brings about a corresponding accentuation of its unconscious complement, thereby increasing the tension between above and below.

78 in making these statements we are keeping entirely within the sphere of Christian psychology and symbolism. A factor that no one has reckoned with, however, is the fatality inherent in the Christian disposition itself, which leads inevitably to a re-versal of its spirit not through the obscure workings of chance but in accordance with psychological law. The ideal of spiritu-ality striving for the heights was doomed to clash with the materialistic earth-bound passion to conquer matter and master the world. This change became visible at the time of the "Renais-sance." The word means "rebirth,' and it referred to the renewal of the antique spirit. We know today that this spirit was chiefly a mask; it was not the spirit of antiquity that was reborn, but the spirit of medieval Christianity that underwent strange pagan transformations, exchanging the heavenly goal for an earthly one, and the vertical of the Gothic style for a horizontal perspec-
tive (voyages of discovery, exploration of the world and of nature). The subsequent developments that led to the Enlighten-ment and the French Revolution have produced a world-wide situation today which can only be called "antichristian" in a sense that confirms the early Christian anticipation of the "end of time." It is as if, with the coming of Christ, opposites that
were latent till then had become manifest, or as if a pendu-lum had swung violently to one side and were now carrying out the complementary movement in the opposite direction. No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell. The double meaning of this movement lies in the nature of the pendulum. Christ is without spot, but right at the begin-ning of his career there occurs the encounter with Satan, the Adversary, who represents the counterpole of that tremendous tension in the world psyche which Christ's advent signified. He is the "mysterium iniquitatis" that accompanies the "sol iusti-tiae" as inseparably as the shadow belongs to the light, in exactly the same way, so the Ebionites 26 and Euchites 27 thought, that one brother cleaves to the other. Both strive for a kingdom: one for the kingdom of heaven, the other for the "principatus huius mundi." We hear of a reign of a "thousand years" and of a "coming of the Antichrist," just as if a partition of worlds and epochs had taken place between two royal brothers. The meeting with Satan was therefore more than mere chance; it was a link in the chain.

(my italics)