Modern Psychology: C. G. Jung’s Lectures at the ETH Zürich, 1933-1941
We do not know what this secret is, but the symbols which he found point to history, indications that not only the Christian ” Weltanschauung ” is meant, but quite other ” Weltanschauungs ” of which the Church wishes to remain in ignorance.
A darkness lies under the conscious, the unconscious, the dark place under the church.
We do not know what this is, but we find a thread of it here.
The secret was known to the church, and it was kept in the Sacramentum, hidden from the profane.
Christ was referred to as the fish.
In a papyrus which has recently been discovered and is in the British Museum he is referred to by the secret sign XP.
The sign >!( is formed from it.
These signs appear in Gnosticism, St. Paul’s sayings are undoubtedly connected with Gnosticism.
On Gnostic gems we find the symbol of the vase, the vase of sin.
The Gnosis is a disturber of the peace of the Church, but it is full of psychological truths, many yet undiscovered.
The vase was the crater, and is very often thought of in connection with Aesculapius, the doctor.
The Egyptian form of this is expressed by the well bucket in which the fruitful water of the Nile is drawn up.
same symbol appears next in the Grail legend and s e ems to come to an end there.
In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s history of Parsifal, written in the beginning of the thirteenth century , we find this sentence “It is called the ” Lapsit exillis”; this was interpreted “lapis ex coelis” , the precious stone out of which the Grail was made coming from the sky, but the word was really “exilis” which means small, insignificant; this appeared so strange that the meaning of the word was changed.
About the same time, in Provence, the philosopher Villanova speaks of the philosopher’s stone as the “lapis exilis”, describing it as one stone, one medicine , one vase, the symbol of healing.
This leads us over to the secret gnosis of the Middle Ages, when it takes the form of alchemy.
This hidden teaching is continue d to the present day in the form of secret societies, the most important of those surviving being the Free Masons.
They do not treasure “day” consciousness, but the things which belong to “night consciousness.
The vast number of members of these societies shows how living these things still are. I have given you this one sequence, it must serve as an example to show that what is being done now has been done before and will re cur again . ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Pages 199-200.