Carl Jung on Moses Anthology

Carl Jung on Moses Anthology

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Carl Jung on “Moses’ – Anthology

There is an uncanonical tradition that Moses left his father’s house at the age of twelve in order to instruct mankind. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 531

Similarly, Christ was lost by his parents, and they found him teaching wisdom in the temple, just as in the Mohammedan legend Moses and Joshua, lose the fish and find in its stead Khidr, the teacher of wisdom. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 531

Christ, as the baptized, is here the subordinate, while John plays the superior role, as in the case of Dhulqarnein and Khidr, or Khidr and Moses, and Khidr and Elias ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 288

The hero is himself the snake, himself the sacrificer and the sacrificed, which is why Christ rightly compares himself with the healing Moses-serpent (fig. 258.09b) and why the saviour of the Christian Ophites was a serpent, too. It is both Agathodaimon (fig. 037) and Cacodaimon. In German legend we are told that the heroes have snake’s eyes ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 593

In the Old Testament the magic power glows in the burning bush and in the countenance of Moses; in the Gospels it descends with the Holy Ghost in the form of fiery tongues from heaven. In Heraclitus it appears as world energy, as “ever-living fire”; among the Persians it is the fiery glow of haoma, divine grace; among the Stoics it is the original heat, the power of fate ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 108

Khidr symbolizes not only the higher wisdom but also a way of acting which is in accord with this wisdom and transcends reason. Moses accepts him [Khidr] as a higher consciousness and looks up to him for instruction. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 247

The tale shows how the immortality-bringing rebirth comes about. Characteristically, it is neither Moses nor Joshua who is transformed, but the forgotten fish. Where the fish disappears, there is the birthplace of Khidr ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 248.

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 9ii, Para 29

This heat is a projection of her own unrealized emotion of a feeling that has intensified into a physical effect but remains unrecognized. Even her facial expression was altered (burnt) by it. This recalls not only the changed face of Moses but also that of Brother Klaus after his terrifying vision of God. It points to an “indelible” experience whose traces remain visible to others, because it has brought about a demonstrable change in the entire personality ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 643

The power of evil is also compared to the strength of the unicorn, as in Psalm 22\21: “Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns;.” On these metaphors is based Tertullian’s allusion to Christ: “His glory is that of the bull, his horn is that of the unicorn.” This refers to the blessing of Moses. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 520

Now that white shape of a girl with black hair-my own soul-and now that white shape of a man, which also appeared to me at the time it resembles Michelangelo’s sitting Moses-it is Elijah. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Pages 248-9, Footnote 187.

The primordial experience is not concerned with the historical bases of Christianity but consists in an immediate experience of God (as was had by Moses, Job, Hosea, Ezekiel among others) which “convinces” because it is “overpowering.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 424.

I feel rather like old Moses, who was permitted to cast but a fleeting glance into the land of ethno-psychological problems. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 433.

The witch doctor has a very ancient book which was given to him by a monk of Einsiedeln who liked him when he was a boy. It is a reprint of an older volume and contains the so-called sixth and seventh books of Moses. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page134

And who in Hell would have invented the Decalogue? That is not invented by Moses, but that is the eternal truth in man himself, because he checks himself. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 16.

… a text that was inscribed on Mary’s [Mellon’s] ring and was a favorite of Jung’s: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 114

Who, confronted with such a picture, would not recall the words of Moses: “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Gen. 1 :2). How could the earth have conceived life if it was not fitted out as a bride by the forces of activity?  ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 216

The magical rod lies in a cupboard together with the 6 & 7th books of Moses and the wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 228

The sixth and seventh books of Moses (that is, in addition to the five contained in the Torah) were published in 1849 by Johann Schiebel, who claimed that they came from ancient Talmudic sources. The work, a compendium of Kabbalistic magical spells, has proved to be enduringly popular. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 230, fn 104

The journey of Moses with his servant Joshua is a life-journey (it lasted eighty years). They grow old together and lose the life-force, i.e., the fish, which “in wondrous wise took its way to the sea” (setting of the sun). When the two notice their loss, they discover at the place where the source life is found (where the dead fish revived and sprang into the sea) Khidr wrapped in his mantle, sitting on the ground. In another version he was sitting on an island in sea, “in the wettest place on earth,” which means that he had just been born from the maternal depths. Where the fish vanished Khidr, the Verdant One, was born as a “son of the watery deep,” his head veiled, proclaiming divine wisdom, like the Babylonian Oannes-Ea, who was represented in fish form and daily came out of the sea as a fish to teach the people wisdom. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 291

The sun is also symbolized by the face of Moses, with the horns meaning radiation, therefore they would be the horns of power. And his face radiated such light when he came down from Sinai that only when it was veiled could the people gaze upon it; that would be the sun in the form of enlightened man. Also the sun is symbolized by the crown of Helios, the sun god, the radiation or the crown of sun rays which the old Caesars used to wear; one sees it chiefly on Roman coins. There the sun would express the human mind or understanding, or the human spirit, it would be a specifically human quality. But here the sun is in the form of the animal. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1028

Following Vollers, we may compare Khidr and Elias (or Moses and his servant Joshua) with Gilgamesh and his brother Eabani (Enkidu). Gilgamesh wanders through the world, driven by fear and longing, to find immortality. His journey takes him across the sea to the wise Utnapishtim (Noah), who knows how to cross the waters of death. There Gilgamesh has to dive down to the bottom of the sea for the magical herb that is to lead him back to the land of men. On the return journey he is accompanied by an immortal mariner, who, banished by the curse of Utnapishtim, has been forbidden to return to the land of the blessed. But when Gilgamesh arrives home, a serpent steals the magic herb from him (i.e., the fish slips back into the sea). Because of the loss of the magic herb, Gilgamesh’s journey has been in vain; instead he comes back in the company of an immortal, whose fate we cannot learn from the fragments of the epic. Jensen believes that this banished immortal is the prototype of Ahasuerus. Once again we meet the motif of the Dioscuri: mortal and immortal, the setting and rising sun. The Mithraic bull-sacrifice is often represented as flanked by the two dadophors, Gautes and Cautopates, one with a raised and the other with a lowered torch. They form a pair of brothers whose characters are revealed by the symbolic position of the torches. Cumont not unjustly connects them with the sepulchral Erotes, who as genies with inverted torches have a traditional meaning. One would stand for death, the other for life. There are certain points of resemblance between the Mithraic sacrifice (where the bull in the centre is flanked on either side by dadophors and the Christian sacrifice of the lamb (or ram). The Crucified is traditionally flanked by two thieves, one of whom ascends to paradise while the other descends to hell. The Semitic gods were often flanked by two paredroi; for instance, the Baal of Edessa was accompanied by Aziz and Monimos (Baal being astrologically interpreted as the sun, and Aziz and Monimos as Mars and Mercury). According to the Babylonian view, the gods are grouped into triads. Thus the two thieves somehow go together with Christ. The two dadophors are, as Cumont has shown, offshoots 61 from the main figure of Mithras, who was supposed to have a secret triadic character. Dionysius the Areopagite reports that the magicians held a feast in honour of τοϋ τρι-πλασίου Μίθρον (the threefold Mithras). ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 293

It is very much like a biblical scene, like Moses on Mount Sinai, for instance, with the people down below worshipping the divine miracle; they all have their arms outstretched to the Indian as if in supplication, so we must assume that the animus as well as the bull have taken on a spiritual or divine significance. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 143