Carl Jung on the “Pope.” – Anthology – Carl Jung Depth Psychology

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Pope with the unicorn as the symbol of the Holy Ghost.—From Scaligcr, Explanntio imaginum (1570); antithesis to Paracelsus, Auslegung der Figuren (1569) ~Editor, CW 12, Image 261

So, you see, I brought these people back into the Church, with the result that the Pope himself gave me a private blessing for having taught certain important Catholics the right way of confessing. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 618

As I said, I have had quite a number of these Catholics—six.

I was quite proud to have so many, and I said to them, “Now, you see, what you tell me here, this is really serious.

You go now to your father-confessor and you confess, whether he understands or does not understand.

That is of no concern.

It must be told before God; and if you don’t do it, you are out of the Church, and then analysis begins, and then things will get hot, so you are much better off in the lap of the Church.”

So, you see, I brought these people back into the Church, with the result that the Pope himself gave me a private blessing for having taught certain important Catholics the right way of confessing.

For instance, there was a lady who played a very great role in the war.

She was very Catholic, and always in the summer she used to come to Switzerland to pass her summer holiday.

There is a famous monastery there with many monks, and she used to go to it for confession and spiritual advice.

Now, being an interesting person, she got a bit too interested in her father-confessor, and he got a bit too interested in her, and there was some conflict.

He was then removed to the Clausura, and she naturally collapsed, and she was advised to go to me.

So she came to me in full resistance against the authorities who had interfered, and I made her go back to her spiritual authorities and confess the whole situation.

And when she went back to Rome, where she lived, and where she had a confessor, he asked her, “Well, I know you from many years ago: how is it that you now confess so freely?”

And she said she had learnt it from a doctor.

That is the story of how I got the Pope’s private blessing.

My attitude to these matters is that, as long as a patient is really a member of a church, he ought to be serious.

He ought to be really and sincerely a member of that church, and he should not go to a doctor to get his conflicts settled when he believes that he should do it with God. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 618-620

Jung never tired of pointing out the vital importance of the new dogma, and in Mysterium Coniunctionis he went into it particularly deeply.

For example, he said that for more than a thousand years, the alchemists prepared the ground for the dogma of the Assumption, which is:

“. . .really a wedding feast, the Christian version of the hierosgamos, whose originally incestuous nature played a great role in alchemy. The traditional incest always indicated that the supreme union of opposites expressed a combination of things which are related but of unlike nature. . . . Alchemy throws a bright light on the background of the dogma, for the new article of faith expressed in symbolic form exactly what the adepts recognized as being the secret of their conjunctio. The correspondence is indeed so great that the old Masters could legitimately have declared that the new dogma has written the Hermetic secret in the skies. ~Barbara Hannah, Jung: His Life and His Work, Page 228-229

That is the programme for the Christian Aeon which must be fulfilled before God can incarnate in the creaturely man. Only in the last days will the vision of the sun-woman be fulfilled.

In recognition of this truth, and evidently inspired by the workings of the Holy Ghost, the Pope has recently announced the dogma of the Assumptio Mariae, very much to the astonishment of all rationalists.

Mary as the bride is united with the son in the heavenly bridal chamber, and, as Sophia, with the Godhead. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 713

Best thanks for your friendly letter of Nov. 8th, which I am sorry I can answer only now.

I must also thank you for sending me the brochure on Christ and the Pope.

You are quite right when you say that the real task of religion would be to cure psychic suffering.

I have always advocated this idea even in medical circles. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 133

I am definitely inside Christianity and, as far as I am capable of judging about myself, on the direct line of historical development. If the Pope adds a new and thoroughly unhistorical dogma to Catholicism, I add a symbolic interpretation of all Christian symbols. At least I am trying. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 334

Looked at from a strictly Catholic point of view I make very heretical statements indeed; but there are plenty of reformers that have done the same thing, including the present Pope, declaring the dogma without the slightest apostolic authority and without the consent even of his own Church, which has emphatically resisted any such declaration during at least the 600 years of its early history. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 335

This is naturally also the case when the ultimate principle is called “matter.”

Only the totally naive think this is the opposite of “myth.”

Materia is in the end simply a chthonic mother goddess, and the late Pope seems to have had an inkling of this. (Cf. the second Encyclical to the dogma of the Assumption!) ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 485

My defence of the Marian dogma is certainly an unexpected joke in the world’s history, but one with a significant background.

Also, the Pope’s latest Encyclical on the Regina et Domina omnis creaturae is uncommonly important in view of coming developments.

Moreover there is an intimation in it of that little door through which the co-Redemptrix can one day enter (participationem filii sui efficacitas habens).

I would give anything to know the innermost thoughts of the Holy Father . . . ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 196

There is great excitement in the Catholic church and much discussion about the new dogma.

I am just reading about it.

The pope has caught them neatly at their own game of fostering creeds that have no foundation in the scriptures. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 32

Boldly breaking through the sacrosanct rule about the definability of a new dogmatic truth, viz., that the said truth is only defi.nibilis inasmuch as it was believed and taught in apostolic times, explicite or implicite, the pope has declared the Assumptio Mariae a dogma of the Christian creed.

The justification he relies on is the pious belief of the masses for more than 1000 years, which he considers sufficient proof of the work of the Holy Ghost.

Obviously the “pious belief” of the masses continues the process of projection, i.e., of transformation of human situations into myth. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 206

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The Pope probably did well to discourage the psychologizing tendency (chiefly among the French Jesuits).

The Trojan horse should be kept hidden as long as possible.

All in all, I consider the declaration of the Assumption the most important symbological event since the Reformation, and I find the arguments advanced by Protestant critics lamentable because they all overlook the prodigious significance of the new dogma. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 8

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You lose nothing and you even gain something in contemplating such thoughts.

It affects your ecclesiastical position but not more than it disturbs my scientific position.

The pope breaking through apostolic authority and the theological resistance of his own clergy got his share too. After Ad Caeli Reginam he got ill again.

There must have been a terrific conflict in him, being the pope on the one hand and the religious innovator on the other.

Should he have spared his clergy that could not agree with the new dogma?

I have no papal authority, only honest common sense and no power except the consensus of a very few thinking individuals.

As you do not belong to the Church exclusively but also to humanity, it is not in the interest of the Church if you pay no tribute to our time. Even the pope did in his way. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 240

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The year 589 foretells Islam, and 1189 the significant reign of Pope Innocent III; 1489 announces a schism of the Church, and 1789 signalizes by inference the coming of the Antichrist. CW 9ii, Para 156.

I would call this comparatively rare variation a visionary rumour.

It is closely akin to the collective visions of, say, the crusaders during the siege of Jerusalem, the troops at Mons in the first World War, the faithful followers of the pope at Fatima, Portugal, etc. CW, Para 597

But anyone who has followed with attention the visions of Mary which have been increasing in number over the last few decades, and has taken their psychological significance into account, might have known what was brewing.

The fact, especially, that it was largely children who had the visions might have given pause for thought, for in such cases the collective unconscious is always at work.

Incidentally, the Pope himself is rumoured to have had several visions of the Mother of God on the occasion of the declaration.

One could have known for a long time that there was a deep longing in the masses for an intercessor and mediatrix who would at last take her place alongside the Holy Trinity and be received as the “Queen of Heaven and Bride at the heavenly court.”

For more than a thousand years it had been taken for granted that the Mother of God dwelt there, and we know from the Old Testament that Sophia was with God before the creation.

From, the ancient Egyptian theology of the divine Pharaohs we know that God wants to become man by means of a human mother, and it was recognized even in prehistoric times that the primordial divine being is both male and female.

But such a truth eventuates in time only when it is solemnly proclaimed or rediscovered. It is psychologically significant for our day that in the year 1950 the heavenly bride was united with the bridegroom.

In order to interpret this event, one has to consider not only the arguments adduced by the Papal Bull, but the prefigurations in the apocalyptic marriage of the Lamb and in the Old Testament anamnesis of Sophia.

The nuptial union in the thalamus (bridal-chamber) signifies the hieros gamos, and this in turn is the first step towards incarnation, towards the birth of the saviour who, since antiquity, was thought of as the filius solis et lunae, the films sapientiae, and the equivalent of Christ.

When, therefore, a longing for the exaltation of the Mother of God passes through the people, this tendency, if thought to its logical conclusion, means the desire for the birth of a saviour, a peacemaker, a “mediator pacem faciens inter inimicos.”

Although he is already born in the pleroma, his birth in time can only be accomplished when it is perceived, recognized, and declared by man. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 748

The papal rejection of psychological symbolism may be explained by the fact that the Pope is primarily concerned with the reality of metaphysical happenings.

Owing to the undervaluation of the psyche that everywhere prevails, every attempt at adequate psychological understanding is immediately suspected of psychologism.

It is understandable that dogma must be protected from this danger.

If, in physics, one seeks to explain the nature of light, nobody expects that as a result there will be no light.

But in the case of psychology everybody believes that what it explains is explained away.

However, I cannot expect that my particular deviationist point of view could be known in any competent quarter. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 463, fn 2

It is chiefly my experiences in the latter field which have given me the courage to enter into the discussion of the religious question and especially into the pros and cons of the dogma of the Assumption—which, by the way, I consider to be the most important religious event since the Reformation.

It is a petra scandali for the unpsychological mind: how can such an unfounded assertion as the bodily reception of the Virgin into heaven be put forward as worthy of belief?

But the method which the Pope uses in order to demonstrate the truth of the dogma makes sense to the psychological mind, because it bases itself firstly on the necessary prefigurations, and secondly on a tradition of religious assertions reaching back for more than a thousand years.

Clearly, the material evidence for the existence of this psychic phenomenon is more than sufficient.

It does not matter at all that a physically impossible fact is asserted, because all religious assertions are physical impossibilities.

If they were not so, they would, as I said earlier, necessarily be treated in the text-books of natural science. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 752

It is a petra scandali for the unpsychological mind: how can such an unfounded assertion as the bodily reception of the Virgin into heaven be put forward as worthy of belief?

Clearly, the material evidence for the existence of this psychic phenomenon is more than sufficient.

It does not matter at all that a physically impossible fact is asserted, because all religious assertions are physical impossibilities.

If they were not so, they would, as I said earlier, necessarily be treated in the text-books of natural science. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 752

Only in 1950, after the teaching authority in the Church had long deferred it, and almost a century after the declaration of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, did the Pope, moved by a growing wave of popular petitions, feel compelled to declare the Assumption as a revealed truth.

All the evidence shows that the dogmatization was motivated chiefly by the religious need of the Catholic masses.

Behind this stands the archetypal numen of feminine deity, who, at the Council of Ephesus in 431, imperiously announced her claim to the title of “Theotokos” (God-bearer), as distinct from that of a mere “Anthropotokos” (man-bearer) accorded to her by the Nestorian rationalists. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 237

Even analysts are not absolutely perfect, and it can happen that they are occasionally unconscious in certain respects.

Therefore long ago I stipulated that analysts ought to be analysed themselves; they should have a father confessor or a mother confessor.

Even the Pope, for all his infallibility, has to confess regularly, and not to a monsignor or a cardinal but to an ordinary priest.

If the analyst does not keep in touch with his unconscious objectively, there is no guarantee whatever that the patient will not fall into the unconscious of the analyst. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 323

The motive and content of the popular movement which contributed to the Pope’s decision solemnly to declare the new dogma consist not in the birth of a new god, but in the continuing incarnation of God which began with Christ.

Arguments based on historical criticism will never do justice to the new dogma; on the contrary, they are as lamentably wide of the mark as are the unqualified fears to which the English archbishops have given expression.

In the first place, the declaration of the dogma has changed nothing in principle in the Catholic ideology as it has existed for more than a thousand years; and in the second place, the failure to understand that God has eternally wanted to become man, and for that purpose continually incarnates through the Holy Ghost in the temporal sphere, is an alarming symptom and can only mean that the Protestant standpoint has lost ground by not understanding the signs of the times and by ignoring the continued operation of the Holy Ghost.

This is obviously out of touch with the tremendous archetypal happenings in the psyche of the individual and the masses, and with the symbols which are intended to compensate the truly apocalyptic world situation today.

It seems to have succumbed to a species of rationalistic historicism and to have lost any understanding of the Holy Ghost who works in the hidden places of the soul.

It can therefore neither understand nor admit a further revelation of the divine drama. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 749

The Assumption is at least an important step forward in Christian (?) symbolism.

This evolution will be completed when the dogma of the Co-Redemptrix is reached.

But the main problem will not be solved, although one pair of opposites (8 and 9) has been smuggled into the divine wholeness.

Thus the Catholic Church (in the person of the Pope) has at least seen fit to take the Marianic movement in the masses, i.e., a psychological fact, so seriously that he did not hesitate to give up the time-hallowed principle of apostolic authority. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1607

I consider myself above stealing my neighbour’s apples and I would not burn down his house, therefore I need no police.

But the police are necessary because at least half of mankind is really rotten, and they need the Church because they would make bad use of their freedom.

The majority of people must live in prison, otherwise they can’t live at all, and that is the reason for laws and organizations. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 521

There were plenty of opportunities for Christ to be mistaken for Dionysus besides his sacrificial death, and so Justinus Martyr claimed that Dionysus was the invention of the devil to counteract the intention of God.

But on the other hand the church pointed out the Osiris-Isis myth as a positive anticipation of Christ.

I have read a Catholic scientific work concerning this theory, which has received the sanction of the Pope. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 219

We see the same phenomenon in the Catholic church; the grandeur of St. Peter’s and the splendor of the Pope is the exterior representation of the most precious thing within.

But the most precious thing is buried in it; when it has reached such a collective expression, it is then just the collective expression, and all the magic or divine power in the vajra has gone over into the power of the collective. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1347

There are still certain figures which embody this archetype in an almost perfect form: the pope, of course, is the wise old man par excellence-he is supposed to be infallible, which means that he is capable of deciding about the absolute truth.

Then every archbishop or bishop is a repetition of that archetype, and innumerable doctor authorities are supposed to know everything and to say marvelous things, even to know all the ropes in black magic.

So that archetype is still living. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 21

Never mind all the things you miss and that life is very hard anyway: everybody must sacrifice himself.

That is plus papal que le pape, more Christian than ever before.

We know of no time in history when a pope or a bishop would have educated his nation as Germany is now being educated under a so-called anti-Christian rule; it is much worse than it has ever been, without mercy, without redemption, without explanation. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1515

Yes, even the Pope has a confessor.

You have just read in the papers about the Pope’s last confession.

On the one side the Pope is a human being, and on the other side a priest, and he has that divine character in the highest degree because, besides the consecration as a priest, he is the representative of the Lord. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1535-1536

The old popes and bishops succeeded in getting so much heathendom, barbarism and real evil out of the Church that it became much better than some centuries before: there were no Alexander VI, no auto-da-fes, no thumbscrews and racks any more, so that the compensatory drastic virtues (asceticism etc.) lost their meaning to a certain extent.

The great split, having been a merely spiritual fact for a long time, has at last got into the world, as a rule in its coarsest and least recognizable form, viz. as the iron curtain, the completion of the second Fish. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 166

There are indeed people who have read with horror the Pope’s Encyclical on Christian marriage, and yet must admit that for cavemen our so-called “Christian” marriage is a cultural step forward.

Although we are still far from having overcome our prehistoric mentality, which enjoys its most signal triumphs just in the sphere of sex, where man is made most vividly aware of his mammalian nature, certain ethical refinements have nevertheless crept in which permit anyone with ten to fifteen centuries of Christian education behind him to progress towards a slightly higher level. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1799

Declaration of the Virgin’s right to the title of Theotokos (“God-bearer”) at the Council of Ephesus in 431, and definition of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX in 1854. ~Editor, CW 14, Page 523, fn 219

Of course one can guess what the religion of the future might be, but it’s hardly worthwhile guessing.

Surely the Christians of 80 A.D. guessed too, but they never would have guessed the splendours of the Vatican and Alexander VI on St. Peter’s throne and the popes of Avignon and 10,000 Christian heretics burnt in Spain, etc.

So one never can tell how the future religion will look or what it will be based on. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 158

He [Jung] thought it an immense pity that the leaders of the Reformation had dismissed the appeal of Pope Paul III to come to Trent in the sixteenth century under promise of safe conduct to try to reconcile their differences. ~Laurens van der Post, Jung and the Story of Our Time, Page 243

Consequently I do not permit myself the least judgment as to whether and to what extent it has pleased a metaphysical deity to reveal himself to the devout Jew as he was before the incarnation, to the Church Fathers as the Trinity, to the Protestants as the one and only Saviour without co-redemptrix, and to the present Pope as a Saviour with co-redemptrix.

Nor should one doubt that the devotees of other faiths, including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on, have the same living relationship to “God,” or to Nirvana and Tao, as Buber has to the God-concept peculiar to himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1507

The hall is bleak. There is the shining crystal. I need to walk up to it and look into its play of fire.

I see in a fiery corona the mother of God with the child as if in an old painting. Peter stands to her left, bowing.

Peter alone with the keys- the Pope with a triple crown in a festive audience-a sitting Buddha appears in a circle of fire – now a many-armed Kali,- this bloody Goddess-now Salome herself desperately wringing her hands, 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, The Black Books, Book 2, Page 186-187

27I”That belongs to us- what do you want with it amongst men?

Whip and a sharp blade and herbs and the plumbline in the cupboard, and the rifle behind the door.”

But I don’t want to suffocate.

“Then take a breath from time to time, but don’t forget to close the lid again.”

Do you mean human air?

“No, divine air, and afterward back in the box.”

What the hell, the Pope is better off.

“Exactly. We need a Pope, you know, someone infallible who has everything he needs, who does not need anyone since he draws things down from heaven and since the angels give him bread.

That is what your beloved fellow meant, not us. Of course, if men were different-or you.

But, you know- double-sided calamity! ”

“By the way, men could also denature themselves for the sake of the Pope. Just wait and see. The Pope still won’t leave the Vatican.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Book 5, Page 249

Ka & Philemon are bigger than the man, they are supra-human (Disintegrated into them one is in the Col. Unc.) …

Philemon is the inverse of Xt. Ka is the brother of the devil, is the antichrist- the Red Pope. Lenin.”

The “Red Pope” may refer to the Prefect of the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide.) (Diary, CLM, pp. 32-36). ~Editor, The Black Books, Book 7, Page 164, fn 36

Wordlessly Elijah and Salome step inside the house.

I follow them reluctantly A feeling of guilt torments me. Is it bad conscience?

I would like to turn back, but I cannot. I stand before the play of fire in the shining crystal.

I see in splendor the mother of God with the child.

Peter stands in front of her in admiration-then Peter alone with the key-the Pope with a triple crown-a Buddha sitting rigidly in a circle of fire-a many-armed bloody Goddess-it is Salome desperately wringing her hands-it takes hold of me, she is my own soul, and now I see Elijah in the image of the stone. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 248

I lock the past with one key, with the other I open the future. This takes place through my transformation.

The miracle of transformation commands. I am its servant, just as the Pope is. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 250

I know, they call this veneration.

And if they do not find the true one, they at least have a Pope, whose occupation it is to represent the divine comedy.

But the true one always disowns himself, since he knows nothing higher than to be a man. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 316

In the latter case the I is depicted as Peter, the chosen rock upon which the Church is to be founded.

The key as the symbol of the power of binding and loosing buttresses this idea, and leads one to the image of the pope as God’s governor on earth with a threefold crown. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 367

It seems to have succumbed to a species of rationalistic historicism and to have lost any understanding of the Holy Ghost who works in the hidden places of the soul.

It can therefore neither understand nor admit a further revelation of the divine drama. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 749

He [Christ] was a man who wanted an increase of consciousness, a better understanding amongst human beings, more love and more knowledge of the heart.

And see what the Church has done with it!

If Jesus should come back today and have an audience with the Pope at the Vatican, they would say: “It is awfully nice, anything new, but it is really awkward!-With the best of will, we couldn’t change it.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 521

The Catholic church had the power: the pope could introduce the feminine principle, but not into the Trinity, for it would then be a quaternion.

You find that conflict between three and four throughout the Middle Ages in all forms and it really goes back to the fact of that quite insurmountable problem of introducing the feminine element into the Trinity.

For the female meant darkness and evil-hell and woman were practically the same.

You see, that simply comes from the fact that woman is associated with darkness, as the female element has always been in China for instance, and old China has of course a very much more balanced view of the world than we have in the West, including the Near East which is as unbalanced as we are. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1080

If the Pope has humour, or if Albert Schweitzer knows that he ran away from the European problem, or Winston Churchill is aware of what an insupportable bully he can be, they are thus far individuated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 324

Of course one can guess what the religion of the future might be, but it’s hardly worthwhile guessing.

So one never can tell how the future religion will look or what it will be based on. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 158

One has no authority when one cannot risk it, and you will be quite astonished how very helpful people we might consider inferior can be.

Even the Pope has a Father Confessor who is a simple priest and by no means one of the Cardinals. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 361

When the Church was driven to compromise more and more with the masses, he revolted against it and became a follower of the Phrygian prophet Montanus, an ecstatic, who stood for the principle of absolute denial of the world and complete spiritualization.

In violent pamphlets he now began to assail the policy of Pope Calixtus I, and this together with his Montanism put him more or less outside the pale of the Church. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 19

A report from the year 1198 says that at the Feast of the Circumcision in Notre Dame, Paris, “so many abominations and shameful deeds” were committed that the holy place was desecrated “not only by smutty jokes, but even by the shedding of blood.”

In vain did Pope Innocent III inveigh against the “jests and madness that make the clergy a mockery,” and the “shameless frenzy of their play-acting.”

Two hundred and fifty years later (March 12, 1444), a letter from the Theological Faculty of Paris to all the French bishops was still fulminating against these festivals, at which “even the priests and clerics elected an archbishop or a bishop or pope, and named him the Fools’ Pope” (fatuorum papam).CW 9i, Para 458

To Pierre d’Ailly the time of Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) had already seemed significant.

About the year 1189, he says, the revolutions of Saturn were once again completed (“complete anno Christi 1189 vel circiter”).

He complains that the Pope had condemned a treatise of Abbot Joachim, and also the heretical doctrine of Almaricus. CW 9ii, Para 138

In this connection we might mention the legend that was current about Gerbert of Rheims, afterwards Pope Sylvester II (d. 1003).

He was believed to have possessed a golden head which spoke to him in oracles.

Gerbert was one of the greatest savants of his time, and well known as a transmitter of Arabic science.

Can it be that the translation of the “Liber quartorum,” which is of Harranite origin, goes back to this author?

Unfortunately there is little prospect of our being able to prove this. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 367

Moreover we have the testimony of the humanist Patrizi that Hermetic philosophy was not felt to be in any way inimical to the Christianity of the Church.

On the contrary, people regarded it as a mainstay of the Christian faith.

For which reason Patrizi addressed a plea to Pope Gregory XIV requesting him to let Hermes take the place of Aristotle. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 147

This has been shown once again in our own day by the solemn promulgation of the dogma of the Assumption.

A Catholic author aptly remarks:

“There seems to be some strange Tightness in the portrayal of this reunion in splendour of Son and Mother, Father and Daughter, Spirit and Matter.” (Victor White, “The Scandal of the Assumption,” Life of the Spirit, V, p.199.)

In this connection it is worth recalling the words of Pope Pius XII’s Apostolic Constitution, Munificentissimus Deus: “On this day the Virgin Mother was taken up to her heavenly bridal chamber” (English trans., p. 15). Cf. Antony of Padua, “Sermo in Assumptione S. Mariae Virginis,” Sermones, III, p. 730. ~CW 14, Page 167, Footnote 349

According to legend, Pope Sylvester II (d. 1003), famed as the transmitter of Arabian science, possessed a golden head that imparted oracles.

This legend may perhaps date back to the Harranite ceremony of the oracular head.

The head has also the subsidiary meaning of the corpus rotundum, signifying the arcane substance. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 626.

For what is to happen to the imagos if they are no longer attached to a human being?

The pope as supreme father of Christendom holds his office from God; he is the servant of servants, and transference of the imagos to him is thus a transference to the Father in heaven and to Mother Church on earth. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 218

Dogmatic images, such as the Trinity, are archetypes which have become abstract ideas.

But there are a number of mystical experiences inside the Church whose archetypal character is still visible.

Therefore they sometimes contain a heretical or pagan element. Remember, for instance, St. Francis of Assisi.

Only through the great diplomatic ability of Pope Boniface VIII could St. Francis be assimilated into the Church.

You have only to think of his relation to animals to understand the difficulty.

Animals, like the whole of Nature, were taboo to the Church.

Yet there are sacred animals like the Lamb, the Dove, and, in the Early Church, the Fish, which are worshipped. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 222

In this respect the “leaders,” with sure grasp, have understood what is so crucially lacking: an unquestionable spiritual and moral authority. The pope or the Church could say they are such an authority, but how many people believe it?

No doubt one ought to believe it, but doesn’t one always use this little word “ought” when one is forced to admit that one simply doesn’t know how the necessary remedy is to be brought about? ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1372

The exclusion of the animal world. Animals were really excluded.

There was no artistic appreciation of the animal till the ox and the ass came in at the margin of the picture perhaps. In the gospels there is no appreciation of the animal as a living being equivalent to the Rindoo attitude.

For example, there is no cathedral where monuments of the horses who had fallen in carrying the stone were set up. In medieval times the animal was grotesque, half devil.

In the very early Church there are exceptions, a sacred leopard, ass, etc. St. Francis of Assisi was an exception, but he was a heretic end only by the cleverness of the Pope was his revolution undone and he was swept into the lap of the Church. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 21

So when one compares the Christian of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries with the Christian of the second century, there is all the difference in the world.

Even if it were possible to confront Pius, the second Pope, with Professor Ritschl, the modern theologist, it would be impossible for them to understand one another. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 45

In the Middle Ages they were all most hellishly afraid of anything new.

Only in 1846 did the Pope allow the earth to revolve around the sun-only since 1846 is that officially true.

It was exactly the same in China.

There was a famous museum of European inventions in Peking, every new invention was collected, but they were put into the museum as curiosities, to show what those red devils were doing in barbarous lands; they never adopted them for themselves. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 149

Of course we cannot assume that God is exactly as we define him.

He prefers to be himself, and what we say about him amounts to no more than what ants might have to say about Mussolini or the Pope.

As we are untouched by the public opinion of an ant heap, so God is surely what he is and not what we say he is.

But what the ant heap has to say about its own highest principle, its own supreme factor, is exceedingly important, because that shows its conception of itself, and we can be sure that the ant heap will be influenced by the conception. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 172

The father symbolizes the procreative, form-giving figure.

He is the spiritual principle that gives meaning.

He is the one who leads the child [ . . . ] into life.

It is the father who, as pater familias, rules and leads the house, as pope the community of the faithful, as pater patriae the country and his people, and, finally, as God the Father the world. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 152

Significantly, the Pope has taken over the name of Pontifex Maximus, supreme bridge builder, which previously was carried by the Roman emperors. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 266

There was also a feast at which they changed places, the abbot and elder monks serving the young lay brothers; and a mock mass was celebrated, the youngest lay brother officiating, at which the songs and jokes were obscene, and they all drank the wine, not only the celebrant; then drunken orgies took place, and they all streamed out of the church into the street and upset the whole place. These feasts and the jeu de paume were stopped by the Pope in the thirteenth century because they went to such extremes. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 26

Yes the father is not enough, he wants to add a particular, symbolic form.

The patient speaks Italian and he also knows Greek and Latin, so the word papa or papas suggests to him the Pope, the absolute Father. The cult of Attis had a temple on the site of St. Peter’s in Rome, and the high priest was called “Papas” so there was already a “Papas” several hundred years before there was a Pope in the Vatican. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 133

The principle that worked for two thousand years was that someone had the truth and could reveal it.

The backbone of the Catholic Church is the claim to the possession of the eternal truth.

It is invested in the Pope and you must simply accept it. But for us this does not settle it.

No one would say now that the truth has been revealed to him, we cannot build on revelation.

We believe in the honest attempt to understand psychological facts. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 184

Mrs.: Baumann: But why did they make black Madonnas in the baroque times?

Dr.: Jung: I don’t know, I never found any good historical explanation for it, though I assume there would be a psychological reason.

There would be an excellent reason for it just at that time in the fact that in the Renaissance the antique point of view came up again; we have evidence of the attempts of the church to revert to antiquity.

The popes were then very near to the Roman Caesars, and the claim of the church to continue the Holy Roman Empire has never been given up.

The pope’s title, pontifex maximus, belonged to the Roman emperors; Alexander VI, in particular, was just the Roman Caesar. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 527

Dr. Jung: It is usually part of a rite to celebrate a particular accomplishment, a victory, for instance, so it is a sort of thanksgiving-Te Deum laudamus.

Or it is part of any moment that celebrates the triumph of the church; or a most solemn entrance of the pope or the cardinal. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 532-533

There are .very intelligent historians who say that if only that man Luther had not been so serious about the whole business, the Popes would have led Christianity back into the most wonderful renaissance of antiquity.

Sure enough, Alexander VI was on his way to it, he did his level best to go right back to the Roman Caesars, but unfortunately that northern monk threw a stone into his honorable attempt.

But Luther or not, there would have been a reaction against it, it was still too early. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 767

The Pope’s ring contains a gem on which is carved the miraculous draught of fishes, symbolizing the shepherd-or the fisher-that draws the flock into the church.

This fish meal was by no means Christian only; it occurred in other cults of those early days when Christianity was just one of a number of mystery cults. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 991

Hermas was said to be the brother of the second pope’s a Christian, but at the time when Christianity was a mystery cult, and as the gods could not be named, he was simply called the Shepherd.

There was a time when Christ was represented as Orpheus, or as the good shepherd, with a lamb over his shoulder.

The custom then was to call this guiding principle the “Shepherd that was herding the flocks,” “The leader of men,” “The Fisher of men,” so Christ was identified with Orpheus and also with Bacchus. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 184-185

The Attis cult celebrated the taurobolium.

The initiate was put into a cauldron, a hole in the earth; a grating was put over it and there they killed a bull so that the blood of the sacrificed animal streamed down on him.

Then he was pulled out, washed, clothed in white, and fed on milk for eight days, for he was a baby, his own youngest son. The high priest, now the Pope, was called Papas. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 329

As they would not allow the communion bread to be of any other kind of flour than wheat.

And holy oil must be olive oil, and the candles must be made in a certain way.

But the war brought a change; because of the scarcity of olive oil, by a special permission of the Pope they were allowed to substitute little electric bulbs, but that was only because of the misery of the times.

The Catholic Church is very reasonable in such a case, but in the major things she would hold to tradition most faithfully. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 396-397

Then the Fish became the symbol.

The Christian baptism in water has to do with this symbolism.

The Pope still wears the fisher ring-a gem that represents the miraculous draught of fishes, symbolizing the gathering of all Christians into the womb of the Church.

So a new psychology began to make itself felt.

It was the dawn of Christianity, and we can follow its course in the astrological picture. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 422

The story says that Zarathustra first became acquainted with the two ministers at the Court of Vishtaspa, and through them with the noble queen whom he converted, and then through her he converted the king.

This is psychologically a very ordinary proceeding, it usually happens that way.

One of the most successful propagandists of early Christianity in high circles was the Pope Damasus I, whose nickname was matronarum auriscalpius, meaning the one who tickles the ears of the noble ladies; he used to convert the nobility of Rome through the ladies of the noble families.

So this is probably a historic detail in the life of Zarathustra.

Then in contradistinction to certain other founders of religions, he married and lived to be quite old.

He was killed by soldiers, while standing near his altar, on the occasion of the conquest of his city. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 5

Instead of saying “Christ,” they used the word Poimen, for instance.

In the whole book of Hermas, which is surely Christian–at least, he was supposed to be the brother of the second pope-the name of Christ is not mentioned at all; he is referred to only as the Poimen. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 106

Just where the Vatican is standing today, for example, there was a temple of Attis, and the head priest of that cult was called papas in Greek, and the priest who is still ruling there in the old place is the papa or pope; papa is the Latin form. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 160

Thoth for instance, is the anticipation of the Logos, so he is also the anticipation of Christ inasmuch as Christ is the Logos.

Now peculiarly enough, the temple of Thoth is called the house of the net-the fisherman’s net-and the Babylonian Marduk is the Logos and his attribute is also the net.

Then the Pope, as the head of the church, is the living impersonation of the Logos, the church being the body of Christ.

He is in the place of Peter who is the representative of Christ, endowed with the apostolic blessing, the grace or the mana that has emanated from the Lord himself.

And the Pope’s attribute is the fisher ring upon which is carved the miraculous draft of fishes with the nets. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 319

It is very possible that the Evangels have been compilations made in places like Asia Minor or Alexandria for the use of the Christian communities there.

Moreover, it is a fact that in the first century the sacred books were considered only as good and useful literature for Christians to read, and never as infallible divine inspiration.

Of course, the church has the memory of those days so they have put the Bible on the Index, and that is quite right because it is a tempting and contradictory collection of books with very dangerous teachings in them.

The Pope reserves the right of the authentic interpretation; in his official position, according to the dogma of infallibility, he is infallible in his interpretation of the dogma.

Also, the church, since it holds higher authority than the Scriptures, can make dogma; that gives a basis for an authoritative body.

But the sayings of that institution do not necessarily agree with the teachings of Christ himself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 475

There is a remarkable example of that in the encyclical [This is Casti Connubii, an Encylical Letter of Pope Pius XI, 31 Dec. 1930.] of the Pope concerning the Christian marriage.’

It is a terrible piece of morality.

It deals with love and marriage from an entirely biological point of view, and concerning the personal and human relation of man and woman there is not a word.

It is a document that makes me shudder when I read it. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1023

The Christian herd of sheep is now without a shepherd; it is brought to the sacrifice of the firstlings and killed gregariously, the most efficient way being war.

That is the psychology which threatens Europe generally.

The old shepherd is done for in practically every country-the herd is no longer led by a benevolent shepherd.

The Pope, or any bishop in the past, was a more benevolent shepherd than the state. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1517

Miss Wolff: When the Pope took on his character of infallibility, did he connect it with that idea of the Holy Ghost?

Prof. Jung: Oh, quite.

The infallibility of the Pope is exactly the same as the character indelebilis, only very much more so.

A priest would not be able through his character indelebilis to establish a dogma, while the Pope, being the immediate successor of St. Peter, being in the place of the Lord-not as a human being mind you, but in officio-is filled with the Holy Spirit.

He is a sort of incarnation of the Holy Spirit, so he can establish a dogma.

Miss Wolff: Is he only infallible in establishing the dogma?

Prof Jung: Yes, only in this function is he infallible; as the head of the Collegium of the cardinals he can establish a dogma by his ultimate decision.

But not even as the Pope has he an infallible character. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1535

So, this figure has twelve arms and hands.

As a rule, both the Tibetan and Indian gods have several arms.

Vishnu with four faces, as well as Brahman, are represented with four arms and four heads.

In Western iconography we have a similar representation of the Trinity: a three-headed divine being in the Christian church.

Although this vivid representation has been banned by the pope, in the monastery at Stein am Rhein such a tricephalous Trinity can still be seen.

But in India this is still quite common. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga Meditation, Vol. 6, Lecture 14, Page 138

We find the cistern in a holy place, a sanctuary, as a sanctified disclosure, a heiron, a Temenos.

Early Christian basilicas often had piscinas, fish ponds into which Christians were dipped; the idea was fishing believers out of the pond.

Early Christians wore a ring with two fishes on it and the net used in this fishing for believers figures on the Pope’s ring. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Lecture XIII, 8th February, 1935, Page 135

He is the figure of the psychopompos, the Hermes, the leader of souls.

In Greek mythology he was called Hermes, the god of fertility.

A form of this god appears as the Poimen, the shepherd, in a book” The Shepherd of Hermas”, written in the second century; Hermas was a brother of Pope Pius who was the second pope and the book was long regarded as canonical, but it was nevertheless rejected by the Muratorian Canon. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Lecture IX, 28th June, 1935, Page 232

You will have seen this many handed motif in reproductions of the Indian and Tibetan gods.

A super human number of limbs or faces in the images of the gods is to be met with every day in India, the four-faced Vishnu for example.

There are similar things in European iconography, the Trinity, for instance, is sometimes represented as a three-headed being.

The Pope has forbidden such a representation but there is such a Trinity in Switzerland, at Stein on the Rhine, in the Church of the Benedictine Monastery of St. George, now used as a Parish Church. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Lecture XIII, 1 7th February1939, Page 82

It was in Venice that the idea of founding a monastic order was first broached and Ignatius decided to go to Rome to obtain the Pope’s consent.

It was on this journey that he had the vision of which I have already spoken.

After considerable difficulties in Rome he succeeded in 1540 in winning the consent of the Pope, Paul III, who founded the order of the Jesuits with a Papal Bull. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Lecture XI, 7th July1939,Page 173

I should like, therefore, to read you a passage from Hippolytus.

He was a dissident Bishop of the Church of Rome and died a martyr’s death about 235 A. D .

He dissented from orthodox views and was the opponent of Pope Calixtus I.

This story belongs to the chronique scandaleuse of the Church.

They had a deplorable dispute, which is interesting inasmuch as it is a case of an introvert and an extravert getting on each other’s nerves. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Lecture III, 22nd November 1940, Page 29

We can see this in the Middle Ages, St. Francis of Assisi, for instance, was much nearer to nature as it was regarded in antiquity than to the papacy.

It needed the whole ingenuity of the Pope to get him within the walls of the Church. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Lecture IV, 29th November 1940, Page 40

These are our main direct sources of Greek Alchemy, but there is also a Greek alchemy which comes to us through the Arabs.

Most of these Arabic texts were translated into Latin about the eleventh and twelfth centuries, though some of these translations are said to date from the tenth century.

Gerbert of Reims, who died in 1003 A.D., is said to have made some of these translations.

He was afterwards Pope Silvester II., and, according to a legend, he kept a golden head in a chest, a kind of oracle, which answered questions. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Lecture X, 24th January 1941,Page 90

Every therapist ought to have a control by some third person, so that he remains open to another point of view.

Even the pope has a confessor.

I always advise analysts: “Have a father confessor, or a mother confessor!”

Women are particularly gifted for playing such a part.

They often have excellent intuition and a trenchant critical insight, and can see what men have up their sleeves, at times see also into men’s anima intrigues.

They see aspects that the man does not see.

That is why no woman has ever been convinced that her husband is a superman! ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams Reflections, Page 134

As the final image in the Apocalypse there appears the motif of the marriage of the Lamb with his Bride, who is the “new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven,” a city-mandala of precious stones “like a jasper, clear as crystal.”

This city is another aspect of Sophia, “who was with God before time began, and at the end of time will be reunited with God through the sacred marriage.”

Jung was enthusiastically interested in the Declaratio Assumptionis Mariae of Pope Pius XII; he saw in this declaration a tendency pushing upwards from the depths of the collective unconscious, a “yearning for peace which stirs deep down in the soul,” and a compensation to the “threatening tension between the opposites,” ~Marie-Louise von Franz, C.G. Jung His Myth in Our Time, Page 148

Christianity slumbers and has neglected to develop its myth in the course of the centuries.

Those who gave expression to the dark stirrings of growth in mythic ideas were refused a hearing.”

“Those” were spirits like Gioacchino da Fiori, Meister Eckhart, Jakob Böhme, Pope Pius XII but especially the alchemists who, occasionally with considerable awareness but more often quite naïvely and unsuspectingly, gave form in their unconscious projections to the “stirrings of growth” in the Christian myth. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, C.G. Jung His Myth in Our Time, Page 199

Carl Jung Depth Psychology

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Carl Jung on the “Pope.” – Anthology

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