Carl Jung on “The Garden of Eden” – Anthology

Being that has soul is living being. Soul is the living thing in man, that which lives of itself and causes life.

Therefore God breathed into Adam a living breath, that he might live. With her cunning play of illusions the soul lures into life the inertness of matter that does not want to live. She makes us believe incredible things, that life may be lived.

She is full of snares and traps, in order that man should fall, should reach the earth, entangle himself there, and stay caught, so that life should be lived; as Eve in the garden of Eden could not rest content until she had convinced Adam of the goodness of the forbidden apple.

Were it not for the leaping and twinkling of the soul, man would rot away in his greatest passion, idleness. A certain kind of reasonableness is its advocate, and a certain kind of morality adds its blessing.

But to have soul is the whole venture of life, for soul is a life-giving daemon who plays his elfin game above and below human existence, for which reason—in the realm of dogma—he is threatened and propitiated with superhuman punishments and blessings that go far beyond the possible deserts of human beings.

Heaven and hell are the fates meted out to the soul and not to civilized man, who in his nakedness and timidity would have no idea of what to do with himself in a heavenly Jerusalem. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 56

As womb or matrix of the “psychic ground,” the mandala contains more feminine features, which in the East are expressed by the image of Buddha’s lotus and the golden city, and in Western culture by the image of Eden divided into four parts, by the temenos, the fortress and the round vessel all feminine symbols. ~Marie Louise Von Franz, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, Page 145

The snake-symbol in alchemy points back to historically earlier images. Since the opus was understood by the alchemists as a recapitulation or imitation of the creation of the world, the serpent of Mercurius, that crafty and deceitful god, reminded them of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and therefore of the devil, the tempter, who on their own admission played all sorts of tricks on them during their work ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 371

The Lucifer legend is in no sense an absurd fairytale; like the story of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, it is a “therapeutic” myth.

We naturally boggle at the thought that good and evil are both contained in God, and we think God could not possibly want such a thing. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 291

It seemed to me that Adam must once have left Paradise in this manner; Eden had become a specter for him, and light was where a stony field had to be tilled in the sweat of his brow. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Page 88

Our parents in the Garden of Eden also found the apple a prelude to something unpleasant that is to doing some work. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 180.

The libido nature of the sacrificed is indubitable. In Persia it was a ram that induced the first man to commit the first sin (cohabitation); it is also the first animal they sacrifice (Spiegel, I, p. 511).

The ram is therefore equivalent to the serpent in the Garden of Eden, which, according to the Manichaean view, was Christ. Melito of Sardis (2nd cent.) taught that Christ the Lamb was comparable to the ram caught in the thicket that Abraham sacrificed in place of his son, and that the thicket represented the Cross. (Fr. V, cited in Robertson, p. 412.) ~CW 5, Footnote 70.

At the same time the theft of the apple is a typical dream-motif that occurs in many different variations in numerous dreams. It is also a well-known mythological motif, which is found not only in the story of the Garden of Eden but in countless myths and fairytales from all ages and climes.

It is one of those universally human symbols which can reappear autochthonously in any one, at any time.

Thus dream psychology opens the way to a general comparative psychology from which we may hope to gain the same understanding of the development and structure of the human psyche as comparative anatomy has given us concerning the human body. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 476

Now what is paradise? Clearly, the Garden of Eden with its twofaced tree of life and knowledge and its four streams. In the Christian version it is also the heavenly city of the Apocalypse, which, like the Garden of Eden, is conceived as a mandala. But the mandala is a symbol of individuation.  ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 73

The image of the city, house, and vessel brings us to their content—the inhabitant of the city or house, and the water contained in the vessel.

The inhabitant, in his turn, has a relationship to the quaternity, and to the fifth as the unity of the four. The water appears in modern dreams and visions as a blue expanse reflecting the sky, as a lake, as four rivers (e.g., Switzerland as the heart of Europe with the Rhine, Ticino, Rhone, and Inn, or the Garden of Eden with the Gihon, Pison, Hiddekel, and Euphrates), as healing water and consecrated water, etc. Sometimes the water is associated with fire, or even combined with it as fire-water (wine, alcohol).  ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 353

In alchemy the snake is the symbol of Mercurius non vulgi, who was bracketed with the god of revelation, Hermes.

Both have a pneumatic nature. The serpens Mercurii is a chthonic spirit who dwells in matter, more especially in the bit of original chaos hidden in creation, the massa confusa or globosa.

The snake-symbol in alchemy points back to historically earlier images. Since the opus was understood by the alchemists as a recapitulation or imitation of the creation of the world, the serpent of Mercurius, that crafty and deceitful god, reminded them of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and therefore of the devil, the tempter, who on their own admission played all sorts of tricks on them during their work. Mephistopheles, whose “aunt is the snake,” is Goethe’s version of the alchemical familiar, Mercurius. Like the dragon, Mercurius is the slippery, evasive, poisonous, dangerous forerunner of the hermaphrodite, and for that reason he has to be overcome. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 371

For the alchemists Paradise was a favourite symbol of the albedo the regained state of innocence, and the source of its rivers is a symbol of the aqua permanens. For the Church Fathers Christ is this source, and Paradise means the ground of the soul from which the fourfold river of the Logos bubbles forth.

We find the same symbol in the alchemist and mystic John Pordage: divine Wisdom is a “New Earth, the heavenly Land. … For from this Earth grew all the Trees of Life. … Thus did Paradise … rise up from the Heart and Centre of this New Earth, and thus did the lost Garden of Eden flourish in greenness.” ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 373

The Lucifer legend is in no sense an absurd fairytale; like the story of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, it is a “therapeutic” myth.

We naturally boggle at the thought that good and evil are both contained in God, and we think God could not possibly want such a thing.

We should be careful, though, not to pare down God’s omnipotence to the level of our human opinions; but that is just how we do think, despite everything. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 291

In the light of these passages it can hardly be said that the author of the Acts of John—presumably a Gnostic—has drawn the necessary conclusions from his premises or that their full implications have become clear to him.

On the contrary, one gets the impression that the light has swallowed up everything dark. Just as the enlightening vision appears high above the actual scene of crucifixion, so, for John, the enlightened one stands high above the formless multitude.

The text says: ‘Therefore care not for the many, and despise those that are outside the mystery!”

This overweening attitude arises from an inflation caused by the fact that the enlightened John has identified with his own light and confused his ego with the self.

Therefore he feels superior to the darkness in him.

He forgets that light only has a meaning when it illuminates something dark and that his enlightenment is no good to him unless it helps him to recognize his own darkness.

If the powers of the left are as real as those of the right, then their union can only produce a third thing that shares the nature of both. Opposites unite is a new energy potential: the “third” that arises out of their union is a figure “free from the opposites,” beyond all moral categories.

This conclusion would have been too advanced for the Gnostics. Recognizing the danger of Gnostic irrealism, the Church, more practical in these matters, has always insisted on the concretism of the historical events despite the fact that the original New Testament texts predict the ultimate deification of man in a manner strangely reminiscent of the words of the serpent in the Garden of Eden: “Ye shall be as gods.”

Nevertheless, there was some justification for postponing the elevation of man’s status until after death, as this avoided the danger of Gnostic inflation.  ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Par 438

The Book of Job places this pious and faithful man, so heavily afflicted by the Lord, on a brightly lit stage where he presents his case to the eyes and ears of the world. It is amazing to see how easily Yahweh, quite without reason, had let himself be influenced by one of his sons, by a doubting thought, and made unsure of Job’s faithfulness. With his touchiness and suspiciousness the mere possibility of doubt was enough to infuriate him and induce that peculiar double-faced behaviour of which he had already given proof in the Garden of Eden, when he pointed out the tree to the First Parents and at the same time forbade them to eat of it.

In this way he precipitated the Fall, which he apparently never intended. Similarly, his faithful servant Job is now to be exposed to a rigorous moral test, quite gratuitously and to no purpose, although Yahweh is convinced of Job’s faithfulness and constancy, and could moreover have assured himself beyond all doubt on this point had he taken counsel with his own omniscience.

Why, then, is the experiment made at all, and a bet with the unscrupulous slanderer settled, without a stake, on the back of a powerless creature? It is indeed no edifying spectacle to see how quickly Yahweh abandons his faithful servant to the evil spirit and lets him fall without compunction or pity into the abyss of physical and moral suffering. From the human point of view Yahweh’s behaviour is so revolting that one has to ask oneself whether there is not a deeper motive hidden behind it.

Has Yahweh some secret resistance against Job? That would explain his yielding to Satan. But what does man possess that God does not have? Because of his littleness, puniness, and defencelessness against the Almighty, he possesses, as we have already suggested, a somewhat keenerconsciousness based on self-reflection: he must, in order to survive, always be mindful of his impotence.

God has no need of this circumspection, for nowhere does he come up against an insuperable obstacle that would force him to hesitate and hence make him reflect on himself. Could a suspicion have grown up in God that man possesses an infinitely small yet more concentrated light than he, Yahweh, possesses?

A jealousy of that kind might perhaps explain his behaviour. It would be quite explicable if some such dim, barely understood deviation from the definition of a mere “creature” had aroused his divine suspicions.

Too often already these human beings had not behaved in the prescribed manner.

Even his trusty servant Job might have something up his sleeve.… Hence Yahweh’s surprising readiness to listen to Satan’s insinuations against his better judgment.  ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 579

Although Yahweh had created the reptiles before Adam, they were common or garden snakes, highly unintelligent, from among whom Satan selected a tree-snake to use as his disguise.

From then on the rumour spread that the snake was “the most spiritual animal.” Later the snake became the favourite symbol of the Nous, received high honours and was even permitted to symbolize God’s second son, because the latter was interpreted as the world-redeeming Logos, which frequently appears as identical with the Nous.

A legend of later origin maintains that the snake in the Garden of Eden was Lilith, Adam’s first wife, with whom he begot a horde of demons. This legend likewise supposes a trick that can hardly have been intended by the Creator. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 619

The motif of the leafless or dead tree is not common in alchemy, but is found in Judaeo-Christian tradition as the tree of paradise that died after the Fall. An old English legend reports what Seth saw in the Garden of Eden.

In the midst of paradise there rose a shining fountain, from which four streams flowed, watering the whole world. Over the fountain stood a great tree with many branches and twigs, but it looked like an old tree, for it had no bark and no leaves. Seth knew that this was the tree of whose fruit his parents had eaten, for which reason it now stood bare.

Looking more closely, Seth saw that a naked snake without a skin had coiled itself round the tree. It was the serpent by whom Eve had been persuaded to eat of the forbidden fruit.

When Seth took a second look at paradise he saw that the tree had undergone a great change. It was now covered with bark and leaves, and in its crown lay a little new-born babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, that wailed because of Adam’s Adam’s sin.

This was Christ, the second Adam. He is found in the top of the tree that grows out of Adam’s body in representations of Christ’s genealogy.  ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 400

Similar ideas of the tree are found in alchemy. We have already met the conception of man as an inverted tree, a view found also in the Cabala. The Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer says: “R. Zehira said, ‘Of the fruit of the tree’—here ‘tree’ only means man, who is compared to the tree, as it is said, ‘For man is the tree of the field’ (Deuteronomy 20 : 19).”

In the gnosis of Justin the trees in the Garden of Eden are angels, while the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the third of the motherly angels, the Naas.

This division of the tree-soul into a masculine and a feminine figure corresponds to the alchemical Mercurius as the life principle of the tree, for as an hermaphrodite he is duplex.

The picture in Pandora, where the tree trunk is a woman’s body, refers to Mercurius in his feminine role of wisdom, who in his masculine aspect is symbolized by the figure of Mercurius Senex or Hermes Trismegistus. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 420

In the course of his mystic peregrination Maier reached the Red (“Erythraean”) Sea, and in the following way: he journeyed to the four directions, to the north (Europe), to the west (America), to the east (Asia). Leaving Asia and turning south to Africa, he found a statue of Mercury, made of silver, and with a golden head. The statue pointed to Paradise, which he espied far off.

Now because of its four rivers, and because it was the abode of the originally androgynous Primordial Man (Adam), the Garden of Eden was a favourite mandala in Christian iconography, and is therefore a symbol of totality and—from the psychological point of view—of the self.

If we take the four directions and the four elements (see note 505) as a symbolical equivalent of the four

basic functions of consciousness, we can say that Maier had become conscious of three of them by the time he reached Asia.  ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 276