The Lucifer legend is in no sense an absurd fairytale
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.
Even so, it would not do to impute all evil to God: thanks to his moral autonomy, man can put down a sizable portion of it to his own account.
Evil is a relative thing, partly avoidable, partly fate just as virtue is, and often one does not know which is worse.
Think of the fate of a woman married to a recognized saint!
What sins must not the children commit in order to feel their lives their own under the overwhelming influence of such a father!
Life, being an energic process, needs the opposites, for without opposition there is, as we know, no energy.
Good and evil are simply the moral aspects of this natural polarity.
The fact that we have to feel this polarity so excruciatingly makes human existence all the more complicated.
Yet the suffering that necessarily attaches to life cannot be evaded.
The tension of opposites that makes energy possible is a universal law, fittingly expressed in the yang and yin of Chinese philosophy.
Good and evil are feeling-values of human provenance, and we cannot extend them beyond the human realm.
What happens beyond this is beyond our judgment: God is not to be caught with human attributes.
Besides, where would the fear of God be if only good —i.e., what seems good to us—were to be expected from him?
After all, eternal damnation doesn’t bear much resemblance to goodness as we understand it!
Although good and evil are unshakable as moral values, they still need to be subjected to a bit of psychological revision.
Much, that is to say, that proves to be abysmally evil in its ultimate effects does not come from man’s wickedness but from his stupidity and unconsciousness.
One has only to think of the devastating effects of Prohibition in America or of the hundred thousand autos-da-fe in Spain, which were all caused by a praiseworthy zeal to save people’s souls.
One of the toughest roots of all evil is unconsciousness, and I could wish that the saying of Jesus, “Man, if thou knowest what thou doest, thou art blessed, but if thou knowest not, thou art accursed, and a transgressor of the law,” were still in the gospels, even though it has only one authentic source.
It might well be the motto for a new morality. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 291
Carl Jung on Lucifer; Fallen Angels – Anthology
The notion of the fallen Lucifer means that a being of the light has fallen under the law of gravity, that it has assumed a material body. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Lucifer, with his three heads in the earth’s deepest abyss, is the counterpart to the Holy Trinity. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar; Pages 173-176.
Finally, as Lucifer, true to his name, he is the bearer of the spark of light, who descended through the planetary spheres from the highest light down into matter, seeking to liberate it as a work of salvation. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar; Pages 173-176.
The only thing that really matters now is whether man can climb up to a higher moral level, to a higher plane of consciousness, in order to be equal to the superhuman powers which the fallen angels have played into his hands. ~Carl Jung, Answer to Job, Para 746.
“God . . . wants to become man, and for that purpose he has chosen, through the Holy [Spirit], the creaturely man filled with darkness — the natural man who is tainted with original sin and who learnt the divine arts from the fallen angels. The guilty man is eminently suitable and is therefore chosen to become the vessel for the continuing incarnation, not the guiltless one who holds himself aloof from the world and refuses to pay his tribute to life, for in him the dark [side of] God would find no room.” ~Carl Jung, Answer to Job, paragraph 746.
But God, who also does not hear our prayers, wants to become man, and for that purpose he has chosen, through the Holy Ghost, the creaturely man filled with darkness—the natural man who is tainted with original sin and who learnt the divine arts and sciences from the fallen angels. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 746.
The theme of the Fire Mountain is to be met with in the Hook of Enoch. Enoch sees the seven stars chained “like great mountains and burning with fire” at the angels’ place of punishment.
Originally the seven stars were the seven great Babylonian gods, but at the time of Enoch’s revelation they had become the seven Archons, rulers of “this world,” fallen angels condemned to punishment.
In contrast to this menacing theme there is an allusion to the miracles of Jehovah on Mount Sinai, while according to other sources the number seven is by no means sinister, since it is on the seventh mountain of the western land that the tree with the life-giving fruit is to be found, i.e., the arbor sapientiae (cf. fig. 188) ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy.
It is remarkable that the angels are always in the plural, a choir of angels. With the exception of Lucifer, and the arch-angels Gabriel and Michael, the angels are not individuals, they appear in choirs and multitudes. They are essentially collective beings. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, 9 February 1940
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
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