Mithraic and Christian Totemism
Of the archaic symbols which may arise to take the place of the missing impersonal attitude, Totemic ideas are perhaps the most frequent and the most important.
- Mithraic totemism, which produces a re-identification with the Bull of Mithras; this will manifest itself in bull-like shouting.
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Christian totemism. This gives identification with the Little Lamb, when one becomes very meek, and adopts a martyr-like attitude. This is archaic; it is indecent, something to be ashamed of. When one has lived through these things, then, as an individual, to go back to it is dirty, obscene. When one is far from it one can look back at it and be interested scientifically in it. But if you get such a regression with archaic symbols, you will get a recrudescence of symptoms, because you are going back to the original slime. This happens when you are too intellectual in the conscious.
When we get a step beyond Ecclesiastical Christianity, we are in a position where our formulated impersonal attitude is defective. We are in a new situation and there is a lack of new attitude in the conscious, and already an old collective attitude has been constellated in the unconscious. (If a very personal problem becomes unconscious, it is probably because it was molded on an archetype which has sucked it down.)
The impersonal attitude is linked up with the pure manifestation of the basic principles: the masculine logos, and the feminine ores. When you are capable of a pure manifestation of a pure Logos or Eros, you will have a pure impersonal attitude. Christ was incarnate Logos or order, end also incarnate Eros or Love of God. The mystic movement of the worship of the Sacred Heart came up re Christ and also are the worship of the Virgin, sword piercing her heart, but later development transferred the heart into
Christ. Christ contains all projections.
Men projected head and called him the Logos, and women projected heart and called him Love. An unconditioned attitude demands sacrifice; so that sacrifice Is correlated to such an unconditioned attitude. But beware of equating it to the Christian idea of self-denial end so forth, which to many people is easy, while the opposite is the real sacrifice, and is equivalent to the unconditioned attitude. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 16.
Carl Jung: The idea is that man is the representative of the whole of creation
Visions : Notes of the seminar given in 1930-1934 (2 Volume Set) (Bollingen)
You may remember that passage in St. Paul about the “apokatastasis,” which is this same idea that the whole of nature, all creatures, are expecting the revelation.
As we are expecting the manifestation as the children of god, a revelation of the Holy Ghost within us, so all creation, even the animals and the plants are waiting for it too; that spiritual miracle of redemption or completion which happens in n=man means the crowning of all nature at the same time.
So everything that has been fettered will be released with the liberation of the children of God.
The idea is that man is the representative of the whole of creation, and whatever happens to him happens in a magic way to the whole world.
One finds the same idea among very primitive people.
The members of a totem clan, for instance, undergo certain ceremonials in order to change themselves; and because of that change, the nature of the totem will change also.
The totem animal is also affected in a way; by their getting into a certain psychical conditions, the fertility of the totem animal is assured.
In the center of Australia the growth of grass is exceedingly important, so they have a variety of grass seed as their totem; they perform their rites and the grass-seed totem is responsible for the crops.
And there is a water totem in places where water is very scarce; they believe that through their ceremonies the water totem will secure enough rain and drinking water. So the primitive idea is also the idea of the “apokatasta- sis.”
It is an exceedingly mystical idea.
And as Paul thought, so the unconscious still thinks. Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 144.
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