Carl Jung on “Logos” – Anthology – Carl Jung Depth Psychology

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[As the Logos, Jesus Christ is God in self-revelation (Light) and redemption (Life). He is God to the extent that he can be present to man and knowable to man. The Logos is God, begotten and therefore distinguishable from the Father, but, being God, of the same substance (essence).]

Carl Jung on “Logos” – Anthology

In the Alexandrian philosophy that arose in the last century B.C., we witness not only an alteration of his nature but an emergence of two other divinities in his immediate vicinity: the Logos and Sophia. Together with him they form a triad, and this is a clear prefiguration of the post-Christian Trinity. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 195

Even in the very early days of Christianity it was accepted that Christ as Logos was God himself (John i : i). . ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 212

More accurately, the unity of substance consists in the fact that the Aeons are descended from the Logos, which proceeds from Nous, the direct emanation of Bythos. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 144 fn 18

The wisdom of God was often identified with the cosmogonic Logos and hence with Christ. The medieval mind finds it natural to derive the structure of the psyche from the Trinity, whereas the modern mind reverses the procedure. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 221

As the Logos, Son of the Father, Rex gloriae, Judex mundi, Redeemer, and Saviour, Christ is himself God, an all-embracing totality, which, like the definition of Godhead, is expressed iconographically by the circle or mandala. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 229

In view of this, the Holy Ghost would have a tendency to exchange his neuter designation for a feminine one. (It may be noted that the Hebrew word for spirit—ruach—is predominantly feminine.) Holy Ghost and Logos merge in the Gnostic idea of Sophia, and again in the Sapientia of the medieval natural philosophers, who said of her: “In gremio matris sedet sapientia patris” (the wisdom of the father lies in the lap of the mother). ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 240

Once the indefinable One unfolds into two, it becomes something definite: the man Jesus, the Son and Logos. This statement is possible only by virtue of something else that is not Jesus, not Son or Logos. The act of love embodied in the Son is counterbalanced by Lucifer’s denial. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 254

Melchisedec, who according to Hebrews 7:3 was “without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God,” was believed to be a pre-Christian incarnation of the Logos. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 306

The uttering of the words of consecration corresponds to the incarnation of the Logos, and also to Christ’s passion and sacrificial death, which appears again in the fractio. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 336

In ecclesiastical symbolism the sword which comes out of the mouth of the Son of Man in the Book of Revelation is, according to Hebrews 4: 12, the Logos, the Word of God, and hence Christ himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 357

The tree of life is guarded by the turning (i.e., transforming) sword, and this is the “seventh power” which begets itself. “For if the flaming sword turned not, then would that fair Tree be destroyed, and perish utterly; but if it turneth into semen and milk, and there be added the Logos and the place of the Lord where the Logos is begotten, he who dwelleth potentially in the semen and milk shall grow to full stature from the littlest spark, and shall increase and become a power boundless and immutable, like to an unchanging Aeon, which suffereth no more change until measureless eternity.” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 359

These psychological connections are seen most clearly in the ancient conceptions of the Original Man, the Protanthropos, and the Son of Man. Christ as the Logos is from all eternity, but in his human form he is the “Son of Man.” As the Logos, he is the world-creating principle. This corresponds with the relation of the self to consciousness, without which no world could be perceived at all. The Logos is the real principium individuationis, because everything proceeds from it, and because everything which is, from crystal to man, exists only in individual form. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 400

“I will be thought,” if evangelical at all, is an exclusively Johannine, post-apostolic speculation concerning the nature of the Logos. Hermes was very early considered to be Nous and Logos, and Hermes Trismegistus was actually the Nous of revelation. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 421

With John’s doctrine of the Logos, Christ came to be regarded simultaneously as the Nous and the object of human thought; the Greek text says literally: (I will be thought, being wholly spirit). Similarly, the Acts of Peter say of Christ: “Thou art perceived of the spirit only.” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 433

For your sakes this cross of light was named by me now Logos, now Nous, now Jesus, now Christ, now Door, now Way, now Bread, now Seed now Resurrection, now Son, now Father, now Pneuma, now Life, now Truth, now Faith], now Grace. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para Para 433

He only hears an explanatory voice, and this may indicate that the cross of light is only a visualization of the unknowable, whose voice can be heard apart from the cross. This seems to be confirmed by the remark that the cross was named Logos and so on “for your sakes.” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 433

Man’s advance towards the Logos was a great achievement, but he must pay for it with loss of instinct and loss of reality to the degree that he remains in primitive dependence on mere words. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 442

This Sophia, who already shares certain essential qualities with the Johannine Logos, is on the one hand closely associated with the Hebrew Chochma, but on the other hand goes so far beyond it that one can hardly fail to think of the Indian Shakti. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 610

Wisdom describes herself, in effect, as the Logos, the Word of God (“I came out of the mouth of the most High”). As Ruach, the spirit of God, she brooded over the waters of the beginning. Like God, she has her throne in heaven. As the cosmogonic Pneuma she pervades heaven and earth and all created things. She corresponds in almost every feature to the Logos of St. John. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 611

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. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 619

If Adam is thought of as a copy of God, then God’s successful son, who served as a model for Abel (and about whom, as we have seen, there are no available documents), is the prefiguration of the God-man. Of the latter we know positively that, as the Logos, he is preexistent and coeternal with God, indeed of the same substance as he. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 628

As God he has always been God, and as the son of Mary, who is plainly a copy of Sophia, he is the Logos (synonymous with Nous), who, like Sophia, is a master workman, as stated by the Gospel according to St. John. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 628

We have always been taught that the Incarnation was a unique historical event. No repetition of it was to be expected, any more too was included in the uniqueness of God’s appearance on earth, in human form, nearly two thousand years ago. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 655

The ancients called the saving word the Logos, an expression of divine reason. So much unreason / was in man that he needed reason to be saved. If one waits long enough, one sees how the Gods all change into serpents and underworld dragons in the end. This is also the fate of the Logos in the end it poisons us all. In time, we were all poisoned, but unknowingly we kept the One, the Powerful One, the eternal wanderer in us away from the poison. We spread poison and paralysis around us in that we want to educate all the world around us into reason. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 280.

Some have their reason in thinking, others in feeling. Both are servants of Logos, and in secret become worshipers of the serpent. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 280.

A descendent of Logos is Nous, the intellect, which has done away with the commingling of feeling, presentiment, and sensation. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 365.

The house represents a fixed abode, which indicates that Logos and Eros have permanent residence in us. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 365.

Where Logos is ordering and insistence, Eros is dissolution and movement. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 365.

Nothing makes this effect clearer than the serpent. It signifies everything dangerous and everything bad, everything nocturnal and uncanny, which adheres to Logos as well as to Eros, so long as they can work as the dark and unrecognized principles of the unconscious spirit. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 365.

From the perspective of Logos, following a movement blindly is a sin, because it is one-sided and violates the law that man must forever strive for the highest degree of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 366.

A: “I ask you, was this [Logos] a concept, a word? It was a light, indeed a man, and lived among men. You see, Philo only lent John the word so that John would have at his disposal the word ‘Logos’ alongside the word ‘light’ to describe the son of man. John gave to living men the meaning of the Logos, but Philo gave Logos as the dead concept that usurped life, even the divine life. Through this the dead does not gain life, and the living is killed. And this was also my atrocious error.” ~Ammonius to Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 269.

The ancients called the saving word the Logos, an expression of divine reason. So much unreason / was in man that he needed reason to be saved. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 280.

If one waits long enough, one sees how the Gods all change into serpents and underworld dragons in the end. This is also the fate of the Logos: in the end it poisons us all. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 280.

Some have their reason in thinking, others in feeling. Both are servants of Logos, and in secret become worshipers of the serpent. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 280.

On a low level the animus is an inferior Logos, a caricature of the differentiated masculine mind, just as on a low level the anima is a caricature of the feminine Eros. ~Carl Jung, Commentary Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 41.

Unconsciousness is the primal sin, evil itself, for the Logos. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 178

It has just struck me that in my commentary I have suggested using “logos” for “hun” instead of “animus,” because “animus” is a natural term for the “mind” of a woman, corresponding to the “anima” of a man. European philosophy must take into account the existence of feminine psychology. The “anima” of a woman might suitably be designated “Eros.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 67-68.

Hun [Animus], then, would be the discriminating light of consciousness and of reason in man, originally coming from the logos spermatikos of hsing, and returning after death through shen to the Tao. ~Carl Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 116.

Essence (hsing), undoubtedly related to logos, appears closely knit with life (ming) when entering phenomena. ~The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 11.

Each individual contains a central monad which, at the moment of conception, splits into life and essence, Ming and Hsing. These two are super-individual principles, and so can be related to Eros and logos. ~The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 73.

Until now it has not truly and fundamentally been noted that our time, despite the prevalence of irreligiosity, is so to speak congenitally charged with the attainment of the Christian epoch, namely with the supremacy of the word, that Logos which the central figure of Christian faith represents. The word has literally become our God and has remained so” ~Carl Jung, CW 10, §554.

Christ contains all projections. Men projected head and called him the Logos, and women projected heart and called him Love. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 16.

Essence (hsing), undoubtedly related to logos, appears closely knit with life (ming) when entering phenomena. ~Carl Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 14

The ancients called the saving word the Logos, an expression of divine reason. So much unreason / was in man that he needed reason to be saved. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 280.

The great philosophers have spoken of them always as being eternal. It is these static images that underlie thinking. We could call them, if we chose, Logos. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 133

Some have their reason in thinking, others in feeling. Both are servants of Logos, and in secret become worshipers of the serpent. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 280.

The animus corresponds to the paternal Logos just as the anima corresponds to the maternal Eros. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Par. 28f.

Some have their reason in thinking, others in feeling. Both are servants of Logos, and in secret become worshipers of the serpent. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 280.

Far too little attention has been paid to the fact that, for all our irreligiousness, the distinguishing mark of the Christian epoch, its highest achievement, has become the congenital vice of our age: the supremacy of the word, of the Logos, which stands for the central figure of our Christian faith. The word has literally become our god, and so it has remained, even if we knew of Christianity only by hearsay. Words like “Society” and “State” are so concretized that they are almost personified. In the opinion of the man in the street, the “State,” far more than any king in history, is the inexhaustible giver of all good; the “State” is invoked, made responsible, grumbled at, and so on and so forth. Society is elevated to the rank of a supreme ethical principle; indeed, it is even credited with positively creative capacities. No one seems to notice that this worship of the word, which was necessary at a certain phase of man’s mental development, has a perilous shadow side. That is to say, the moment the word, as a result of centuries of education, attains universal validity, it severs its original connection

with the divine Person. There is then a personified Church, a personified State; belief in the word becomes credulity, and the word itself an infernal slogan capable of any deception. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 554

The discussion of the sexual problem is only a somewhat crude prelude to a far deeper question, and that is the question of the psychological relationships between the sexes. In comparison with this the other pales into insignificance, and with it we enter the real domain of woman. Woman’s psychology is founded on the principle of Eros, the great binder and loosener, whereas from ancient times the ruling principle ascribed to man is Logos. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 254

In the Alexandrian philosophy that arose in the last century B.C., we witness not only an alteration of his nature but an emergence of two other divinities in his immediate vicinity: the Logos and Sophia. Together with him they form a triad, and this is a clear prefiguration of he post-Christian Trinity. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 193

As the Logos, he is the world-creating principle. This corresponds with the relation of the self to consciousness, without which no world could be perceived at all. The Logos is the real principium individuationis, because everything proceeds from it, and because everything which is, from crystal to man, exists only in individual form. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 400

“I will be thought,” if evangelical at all, is an exclusively Johannine, post-apostolic speculation concerning the nature of the Logos. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 421

With John’s doctrine of the Logos, Christ came to be regarded simultaneously as the Nous and the object of human thought; the Greek text says literally: “Nor^^^^j^at 6k\w vovs cbv oXos” ^^ (I will be thought, being wholly spirit). Similarly, the Acts of Peter say of Christ: “Thou art perceived of the spirit only.” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 422

Man’s advance to^vards the Logos was a great achievement, but he must pay for it with loss of instinct and loss of reality to the degree that he remains in primitive dependence on mere words. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 442

It is worth while to examine this text more closely. Wisdom describes herself, in effect, as the Logos, the Word of God (“I came out of the mouth of the most High”). ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 611

As the cosmogonic Pneuma she pervades heaven and earth and all created things. She corresponds in almost every feature to the Logos of St. John. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 611

No repetition of it was to be expected, any more than one could expect a further revelation of the Logos, for this too was included in the uniqueness of God’s appearance on earth, in human form, nearly two thousand years ago. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 655

I use Eros and Logos merely as conceptual aids to describe the fact that woman’s consciousness is characterized more by the connective quality of Eros than by the discrimination and cognition associated with Logos. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 29

In men, Eros, the function of relationship, is usually less developed than Logos. The Other, the fourth, corresponds in the Gnostic quaternities to the fiery god, “the fourth by number,” to the dual wife of Moses (Zipporah and the Ethiopian woman), to the dual Euphrates (river and Logos), to the fire. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 29

Just as the anima becomes, through integration, the Eros of consciousness, so the animus becomes a Logos; and in the same way that the anima gives relationship and relatedness to a man’s consciousness, ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 33

Together they form a divine pair,5 one of whom, in accordance with his Logos nature, is characterized by pneuma and nous, rather like Hermes with his ever-shifting hues, while the other, in accordance with her Eros nature, wears the features of Aphrodite, ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 41.

Irenaeus (Adversus haereses, II,5,1) records the Gnostic teaching that when Christ, as the demiurgic Logos, created his mother’s being, he “cast her out of the Pleroma—that is, he cut her off from knowledge.” ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Page 41, fn 23

Note that Satan finds the two fishes before the creation, i.e., “in the beginning,” when the spirit of God still brooded upon the dark face of the waters (Gen. 1 : 2). Had it been one fish only, we could interpret it as a prefiguration of the Redeemer, as the pre-existent Christ of St. John’s gospel, the Logos that “was in the beginning with God.” (Christ himself says in this document, with reference to John 1:2: “But I shall sit with my Father.”) ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 230

The Logos was in the beginning, and God was the Logos, long before the Incarnation. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 294

The fact that not only the Gnostic Logos but Christ himself was drawn into the orbit of sexual symbolism is corroborated by the fragment from the Interrogationes maiores Mariae, quoted by Epiphanius. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 314

The Archanthropos is the Logos, whom the souls follow “twittering,” as the bats follow Hermes in the nekyia. He leads them to Oceanus and—in the immortal words of Homer—to “the doors of Helios and the land of dreams.” ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 327

The text defines the above-mentioned quaternio, which is identical with Zeesar, the upwards-flowing Jordan, the hermaphrodite, Geryon of the threefold body, and the horn of the moon, as the cosmogonic Logos (John 1:iff.), and the “life that was in him” (John 1:4) as a “generation of perfect men”. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 339

From this we can see clearly that the serpent was eithera forerunner of man or a distant copy of the Anthropos, and how justified is the equation Naas = Nous = Logos r= Christ = Higher Adam. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 367

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. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 373

For instance, the fourth of the rivers of Paradise, the Euphrates, signifies the mouth through which food goes in and prayers go out, as well as the Logos. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 396

The Other, the fourth, corresponds in the Gnostic quaternities to the fiery god, “the fourth by number,” to the dual wife of Moses (Zipporah and the Ethiopian woman), to the dual Euphrates (river and Logos), to the fire. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 397

The one great exception is Christ. As , the Son of Man, and as the Son of God, he embodies the God-man; and as an incarnation of the Logos by ‘pneumatic” impregnation, he is an avatar of the divine Nous. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 412

In the Rosarium version of the “Visio” the death of the son is the result of his complete disappearance into the body of Beya during coitus. In another version he is eaten by his father (fig. 168), or the Sun is drowned in Mercurius or swallowed by the lion (fig. 169). Thabritius is the masculine, spiritual principle of light and Logos which, like the Gnostic Nous, sinks into the embrace of physical nature (Physis). ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 168

Once they have been activated, the regius filius—spirit, Logos, Nous—is swallowed up by Physis; that is to say, the body and the psychic representatives of the organs gain mastery over the conscious mind. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 440

It is by virtue of the wisdom and art which he himself has acquired, or which God has bestowed upon him, that he can liberate the world-creating Nous or Logos, lost in the world’s materiality, for the benefit of mankind. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 452

We have seen that the “heavenly horn of the moon” is closely connected with the unicorn. Here it means not only “Geryon of the threefold body” s * and the Jordan, but the hermaphroditic Man as well, who is identical with the Johannine Logos. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 551

The content is the water that Jesus changed into wine, and the water is also represented by the Jordan, which signifies the Logos, thus bringing out the analogy with the Chalice. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 551

Brünhilde is a sort of “split-off” from Wotan, part of his personality, just as Pallas Athene was an emanation of Zeus. She is, as it were, Wotan’s emissary or agent, and therefore corresponds to the angel of Yahweh, to the “eye of Ahura” or Vohu Manah, God’s good thought in Persian legend, or to the Babylonian Nabu, the word of fate, or to Hermes, the messenger of the gods, whom the philosophers equated with Reason and Logos. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 560

In Assyria the role of Logos falls to the fire god, Gibil. That Wagner should have put the designs of so martial a god as Wotan into the hands of a feminine agent is somewhat remarkable, despite the Greek precedent of Pallas Athene ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 560

The intellect is its progenitor and father, and what the intellect conceives the world-soul brings to birth in reality. “What lies enclosed in the intellect comes to birth in the world-soul as Logos, fills it with meaning and makes it drunken as if with nectar” (Plotinus, Enneads, III, 5, 9.) ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 198

“The demands of the unconscious act at first like a paralysing poison on a man’s energy and resourcefulness, so that it may well be compared to the bite of a poisonous snake. Apparently it is a hostile demon who robs him of energy, but in actual fact it is his own unconscious whose alien tendencies are beginning to check the forward striving of the conscious mind. The cause of this process is often extremely obscure, the more so as it is complicated by all kinds of external factors and subsidiary causes, such as difficulties in work, disappointments, failures, reduced efficiency due to age, depressing family problems, and so on and so forth. According to the myths it is the woman who secretly enslaves a man, so that he can no longer free himself from her and becomes a child again. It is also significant that Isis, the sister-wife of the sun-god, creates the poisonous serpent from his spittle, which, like all bodily secretions, has a magical significance, being a libido equivalent. She creates the serpent from the libido of the god, and by this means weakens him and makes him dependent on her. Delilah acts in the same way with Samson: by cutting off his hair, the sun’s rays, she robs him of his strength. This demon-woman of mythology is in truth the “sister-wife-mother,” the woman in the man, who unexpectedly turns up during the second half of life and tries to effect a forcible change of personality. I have dealt with certain aspects of this change in my essay on “The Stages of Life.” It consists in a partial feminization of the man and a corresponding masculinization of the woman. Often it takes place under very dramatic circumstances: the man’s strongest quality, his Logos principle, turns against him and as it were betrays him. The same thing happens with the Eros of the woman. The man becomes rigidly set in his previous attitude, while the woman remains caught in her emotional ties and fails to develop her reason and understanding, whose place is then taken by equally obstinate and inept “animus” opinions. The fossilization of the man shrouds itself in a smoke-screen of moods, ridiculous irritability, feelings of distrust and resentment, which are meant to justify his rigid attitude. A perfect example of this type of psychology is Schreber’s account of his own psychosis, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 458

The mother’s influence is mainly on the Eros of her son; therefore it was only logical that Oedipus should end up by marrying his mother. But the father exerts his influence on the mind or spirit of his daughter—on her “Logos.” This he does by increasing her intellectuality, often to a pathological degree which in my later writings I have described as “animus possession. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 272

Scholasticism consisted essentially in a dialectical gymnastics which gave the symbol of speech, the word, an absolute meaning, so that words came in the end to have a substantiality with which the ancients could invest their Logos only by attributing to it a mystical value ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 22

These religions strove after precisely that higher form of social intercourse symbolized by a projected (“incarnate”) idea (the Logos), whereby all the strongest impulses of man which formerly had flung him from one passion to another and seemed to the ancients like the compulsion of evil stars, Heimarmene, or like what we psychologists would call the compulsion of libido could be made available for the maintenance of society ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 102

I have dealt with certain aspects of this change in my essay on “The Stages of Life.” It consists in a partial feminization of the man and a corresponding masculinization of the woman. Often it takes place under very dramatic circumstances: the man’s strongest quality, his Logos principle, turns against him and as it were betrays him. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 458

Here the magnetic attraction comes from the Logos. This denotes a thought or idea that has been formulated and articulated, hence a content and a product of consciousness. Consequently the Logos is very like the aqua doctrinae, but whereas the Logos has the advantage of being an autonomous personality,

the latter is merely a passive object of human action. The Logos is nearer to the historical Christ-figure, just as the “water” is nearer to the magical water used in ritual (ablution, aspersion, baptism). ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 293

The agent is an inanimate and in itself passive substance, water. It is drawn from the depths of the well, handled by human hands, and used according to man’s needs. It signifies the visible doctrine, the aqua doctrinae or the Logos, communicated to others by word of mouth and by ritual. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 293

It is the lowest (devil) and the highest (son of God, Logos, Nous, Agathodaimon). ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 293

But one should not overlook the fact that in reality man’s procreative power is only a special instance of the “procreative nature of the Whole.” “This, for them, is the hidden and mystical Logos,” which, in the text that follows, is likened to the phallus of Osiris—”and they say Osiris is water.” Although the substance of this seed is the cause of all things, it does not partake of their nature. They say therefore: “I become what I will, and I am what I am.” ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 313

This Logos or quaternity is “the cup from which the king, drinking, draws his omens,” 10° or the beaker of Anacreon. The cup leads Hippolytus on to the wine miracle at Cana, which, he says, “showed forth the kingdom of heaven”; for the kingdom of heaven lies within us, like the wine in the cup. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 331

The one great exception is Christ. As the Son of Man, and as the Son of God, he embodies the God-man; and as an incarnation of the Logos by ‘pneumatic” impregnation, he is an avatar of the divine l’01’S. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 412

Thabritius is the masculine, spiritual principle of light and Logos which, like the Gnostic Nous, sinks into the embrace of physical nature (Physis). ~Carl Jung, CW 12, 437

Here it means not only “Geryon of the threefold body” s * and the Jordan, but the hermaphroditic Man as well, who is identical with the Johannine Logos. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, 551

Although Wilhelm’s translation of hun as “animus” seems justified to me, nonetheless I had important reasons for choosing the term “Logos” for a man’s “spirit,” for his clarity of consciousness and his rationality, rather than the otherwise appropriate expression “animus.” ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 59

I would prefer to translate hun as it appears in man by “Logos.” Wilhelm in his translation uses Logos for hsing, which can also be translated as “essence of human nature” or “creative consciousness.” ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 59

After death, hun becomes shen, “spirit,” which is very close, in the philosophical sense, to hsing. Since the Chinese concepts are not logical in our sense of the word, but are intuitive ideas, their meanings can only be elicited from the ways in which they are used and from the constitution of the written characters, or from such relationships as obtain between hun and shen. Hun, then, would be the light of consciousness and reason in man, originally coming from the logos spermatikos of hsing, and returning after death through shen to the Tao. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 59

Used in this sense the expression “Logos” would be especially appropriate, since it includes the idea of a universal being, and thus covers the fact that man’s clarity of consciousness and rationality are something universal rather than individually Unique. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 59

The Logos principle is nothing personal, but is in the deepest sense impersonal, and thus in sharp contrast to the anima, which is a personal demon expressing itself in thoroughly personal moods (“animosity”!). ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 59

On a low level the animus is an inferior Logos, a caricature of the differentiated masculine mind, just as on a low level the anima is a caricature of the feminine Eros. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 60

To pursue the parallel further, we could say that just as hun corresponds to hsing, translated by Wilhelm as Logos, so the Eros of woman corresponds to ming, “fate” or “destiny,” interpreted by Wilhelm as Eros. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 60

Eros is an interweaving; Logos is differentiating knowledge, clarifying light. Eros is relatedness, Logos is discrimination and detachment. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 60

Hence the inferior Logos of woman’s animus appears as something quite unrelated, as an inaccessible prejudice, or as an opinion which, irritatingly enough, has nothing to do with the essential nature of the object. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 60

Dorn, in his “Speculativa philosophia,” gives a long and interesting interpretation of the sword: it is the “sword of God’s wrath,” which, in the form of Christ the Logos, was hung upon the tree of life. Thus the wrath of God was changed to love, and “the water of Grace now bathes the whole world.” ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 110

Here again, as in Zosimos, the water is connected with the sacrificial act. Since the Logos, the Word of God, is “sharper than any two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4 : 12), the words of the Consecration in the Mass were interpreted as the sacrificial knife with which the offering is slain. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 110

The parallel with the Trinity could not be more clearly indicated. The anonymous commentator of the “Tractatus aureus” puts the parallel with Christ as Logos just as unmistakably. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 271

Hence this Word of renewal is the seed of promise, or the philosophic heaven refulgent with the infinite lights of the stars.” Mercurius is the Logos become world. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 271

Kyllenios does in fact appear in Hippolytus as identical on the one hand with the Logos and on the other with the wicked Korybas, the phallus, and the demiurgic principle in general. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 278

The figure of Christ the Logos has raised the anima rationalis in man to a level of importance which remains unobjectionable so long as it knows itself to be below and subject to the Kvpios, the Lord of Spirits. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 294

I would only draw attention to the synonymity of Christ, Logos, and Hermes, and the derivation of Jesus from the so-called “second tetrad” among the Valentinians. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 366

Christ as Logos is the two-edged sword, which symbolizes God’s wrath, as in Revelation 1:16. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 447

Christ as Logos is synonymous with the Naas, the serpent of the Nous among the Ophites. The Agathodaimon (good spirit) had the form of a snake, and in Philo the snake was considered the “most spiritual” animal. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 448

The Logos-nature of Christ represented by the chthonic serpent is the maternal wisdom of the divine mother, which is prefigured by Sapientia in the Old Testament. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 448

Whereas Christ is God and is begotten by the Father, the filius regius is the soul of nature, born of the world-creating Logos, of the Sapientia Dei sunk in matter. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 124

The Johannine interpretation of Christ as the pre-worldly Logos is an early attempt of this kind to put into other words the “meaning” of Christ’s essence. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, 170

This Dog, they say, being a certain divine Logos, has been established judge of the quick and the dead, and as the Dog is seen to be the star of the plants, so is the Logos, they say, in respect of the heavenly plants, which are men. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, 176

Logos and Eros are intellectually formulated intuitive equivalents of the archetypal images of Sol and Luna. In my view the two luminaries are so descriptive and so superlatively graphic in their implications that I would prefer them to the more pedestrian terms Logos and Eros, although the latter do pin down certain psychological peculiarities more aptly than the rather indefinite “Sol and Luna.” ~Carl Jung, CW 14, 226

As regards the origin and meaning of the avis Hermetis, I would like to mention the report of Aelian that the ibis is “dear to Hermes, the father of words, since in its form it resembles the nature of the Logos; for its blackness and swift flight could be compared to the silent and introverted Logos, but its whiteness to the Logos already uttered and heard, which is the servant and messenger of the inner word.” ~Carl Jung, CW 14, 250

In Ripley’s case there is the more immediate possibility that he modified for his own purpose the conception of the Ancient of Days and his youthful son the Logos, who in the visions of Valentinus the Gnostic and of Meister Eckhart was a small boy. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, 379

In later centuries this relationship extended to Christ, who from time immemorial was this same Anthropos or Son of Man, appearing in the gospel of St. John as the cosmogonic Logos that existed before the world was: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” ~Carl Jung, CW 14, 397

The son of this one day is the Light, the Logos (John 1:5), who is the Johannine Christ. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, 475

The latter symbol had slowly crystallized out in the course of the centuries, though it was clearly prefigured in the Logos of St. John. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, 507

Carl Jung Depth Psychology

For Educational Purposes Only

Carl Jung on “Logos” – Anthology

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