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Jung, in his autobiography 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections', speaks of a period in his life when he was experiencing a series of visions and fantasies, an important period in that from these experiences stemmed all the creative work which he accomplished in later years.
It was during this phase of his development that 'Septem Sermones ad Mortuos' came into being. Its writing was accompanied by strange phenomena and, as Jung says: 'Then it began to flow out of me and in the course of three evenings the thing was written. As soon as I took up the pen, the whole ghostly assemblage evaporated. The room quietened and the atmosphere cleared. The haunting was over.'
Jung, in the guise of the second century gnostic Basilides of Alexandria, teaches the unperfected souls of Christians that they cannot be true to their own nature because they 'replace the incompatible many by a single god...and mutilate the creature whose nature and aim is distinctiveness... For redemption's sake I teach you the rejected truth, for the sake of which I was rejected'.
The dead came back from Jerusalem, where they found not what they sought. They prayed me let them in and sought my word, and thus I began my teaching.
This nothingness or fullness we call the PLEROMA. Therein both thinking and being cease, since the eternal and infinite possess no qualities. It contains no being, for it would then be distinct from the pleroma, and would possess qualities which would distinguish it as something distinct from the pleroma.
In the pleroma there is nothing and everything. It is quite fruitless to think about the pleroma, for this would mean self-dissolution.
CREATURA is not in the pleroma, but in itself. The pleroma is both beginning and end of created beings. It pervades them as light pervades the air. Although the pleroma pervades everywhere, yet it has no share of created being, just as a transparent body becomes neither light nor dark through the light which pervades it. We are, however, the pleroma itself, for we are a part of the eternal and infinite. But we have no share in it, as we are infinitely removed from the pleroma; not spiritually or temporally, but essentially, since we are distinguished from the pleroma in our essence as creatura, which is confined within time and space.
Yet because we are parts of the pleroma, the pleroma is also in us. Even in the smallest point is the pleroma endless, eternal, and entire, since small and great are qualities which are contained in it. It is that nothingness which is everywhere whole and continuous. Only figuratively, therefore, do I speak of created being as a part of the pleroma. Because, actually, the pleroma is nowhere divided, since it is nothingness. We are also the whole pleroma, because, figuratively, the pleroma is the smallest point in us and the boundless firmament about us.
But wherefore, then, do you speak of the pleroma at all, since it is thus everything and nothing?
I speak of it to make a beginning somewhere, and also to free you from the delusion that somewhere, either without or within, there stands something fixed, or in some way established, from the beginning. Every so-called fixed and certain thing is only relative. That alone is fixed and certain which is subject to change.
What is changeable, however, is creatura. Therefore it is the one thing which is fixed and certain; because it has qualities : it is even quality itself.
How then did creatura originate?
Created beings came to pass, not creatura; since created being is the very quality of the pleroma, as much as non-creation which is the eternal death. In all times and places is creation, in all times and places is death. The pleroma has all, distinctiveness and non-distinctiveness.
Distinctiveness is creatura. Distinctiveness is its essence, and therefore it distinguishes. Therefore man discriminates because his nature is distinctiveness. Therefore he also distinguishes qualities of the pleroma which are not. He distinguishes them out of his own nature. Therefore must he speak of qualities of the pleroma which are not.
What use, then, to speak of it? You said there is no profit in thinking upon the pleroma?
I said that to free you from the delusion that we are able to think about the pleroma. When we distinguish qualities of the pleroma, we are speaking from the ground of our own distinctiveness and concerning our own distinctiveness. But we have said nothing concerning the pleroma. Concerning our own distinctiveness, however, it is necessary to speak, so that we may distinguish ourselves enough. Our very nature is distinctiveness. If we are not true to this nature we do not distinguish ourselves enough. Therefore we must make distinctions of qualities.
What is the harm in not distinguishing oneself?
If we do not distinguish, we get beyond our own nature, away from creatura. We fall into the indistinctiveness, which is the other quality of the pleroma. We fall into the pleroma itself and cease to be creatures. We are given over to dissolution in the nothingness. This is the death of the creature. Therefore we die in such measure as we do not distinguish. Hence the natural striving of the creature goeth towards distinctiveness, fightes against primeval, perilous sameness. This is called the PRINCIPIUM INDIVIDUATIONIS. This principle is the essence of the creature. From this you can see why indistinctiveness and non-distinction are a great danger for the creature.
We must, therefore, distinguish the qualities of the pleroma. The qualities are PAIRS OF OPPOSITES, such as -
The pairs of opposites are qualities of the pleroma which are not, because each balances the other. As we are the pleroma itself, we also have all these qualities in us. Because the very ground of our nature is distinctiveness, therefore we have these qualities in the name and sign of distinctiveness, which means -
When we strive after the good or the beautiful, we thereby forget our own nature, which is distinctiveness, and we are delivered over to the qualities of the pleroma, which are pairs of opposites. We labour to attain to the good and the beautiful, yet at the same time we also lay hold of the evil and the ugly, since in the pleroma these are one with the good and beautiful. When, however, we remain true to our own nature, which is distinctiveness, we distinguish ourselves from the good and the beautiful, and, therefore, at the same time, from the evil and the ugly. And thus we avoid falling into the pleroma, namely, into nothingness and dissolution.
But difference and sameness are also qualities of the pleroma. How would it be, then, if we strive after difference? Are we, in so doing, not true to our own nature? And must we none the less be given over to sameness when we strive after difference?
You must not forget that the pleroma has no qualities. We create them through thinking. If, therefore, you strive after difference or sameness, or any qualities whatsoever, you pursue thoughts which flow to you out of the pleroma; thoughts, namely, concerning non-existing qualities of the pleroma. In as much as you run after these thoughts, you fall again into the pleroma, and reach difference and sameness at the same time. Not your thinking, but your being, is distinctiveness. Therefore not after difference, as you think it, must you strive, but after your YOUR OWN BEING. At bottom, therefore, there is only one striving, namely, the striving after your own being. If you had this striving you would not need to know anything about the pleroma and its qualities, and yet would you come to your right goal by virture of your own being. Since, however, thought estranges from being, that knowledge I must teach you with which you may be able to hold your thought in leash.
In the night the dead stood along the wall and cried : We would have knowledge of god. Where is god? Is god dead?
He is distinguished, however, from created beings through this, that he is more indefinite and indeterminable than they. He is less distinct that created beings, since the ground of his being is effective fullness. Only in so far as he is definite and distinct is he creatura, and in like measure is he the manifestation of the effective fullness of the pleroma.
Everything which we do not distinguish falls into the pleroma and is made void by its opposite. If, therefore, we do not distinguish god, effective fullness is for us extinguished.
Moreover god is the pleroma itself, as likewise each smallest point in the created and uncreated is the pleroma itself.
Effective void is the nature of the devil. God and devil are the first manifestations of nothingness which we call the pleroma. It is indifferent whether the pleroma is or is not, since in everything it is balanced and void. Not so creatura. In so far as god and devil are creatura they do not extinguish each other, but stand one against the other as effective opposites. We need no proof of their existence. It is enough that we must always be speaking of them. Even if both were not, creatura, of its own essential distinctiveness, would forever distinguish them anew out of the pleroma.
Everything that discrimination takes out of the pleroma is a pair of opposites. To god, therefore, always belongs the devil.
This inseparability is as close and, as your own life has made you see, as indissoluble as the pleroma itself. Thus it is that both stand very close to the pleroma, in which all opposites are extinguished and joined.
God and devil are distinguished by the qualities fullness and emptiness, generation and destruction. EFFECTIVENESS is common to both. Effectiveness joins them. Effectiveness, therefore, stands above both; it is a god above god, since in its effect it unites fullness and emptiness.
This is a god whom you knew not, for mankind forgot it. We name it by its name ABRAXAS. It is more indefinite still than god and devil.
That god may be distinguished from it, we name god HELIOS or Sun.
Abraxas is effect. Nothing stands opposed to it but the ineffective; hence its effective nature freely unfolds itself. The ineffective is not, therefore resists not. Abraxas stands above the sun and above the devil. It is improbably probability, unreal reality. Had the pleroma a being, Abraxas would be its manifestation. It is the effective itself, not any particular effect, but effect in general.
It is unreal reality, because it has no definite effect.
It is also creatura, because it is distinct from the pleroma.
The sun has a definite effect, and so has the devil. Wherefore do they appear to us more effective than indefinite Abraxas.
It is force, duration, change.
The dead now raised a great tumult, for they were Christians.
Like mists arising from a marsh, the dead came near and cried : Speak further unto us concerning the supreme god.
Smaller and weaker life seems to be than the summum bonum; wherefore it is also hard to conceive that Abraxas transcends even the sun in power, who is himself the radiant source of all the force of life.
Abraxas is the sun, and at the same time the eternally sucking gorge of the void, the belittling and dismembering devil.
The power of Abraxas is twofold; but you see it not, because for your eyes the warring opposites of this power are extinguished.
What the god-sun speaketh is life.
What the devil speaketh is death.
But Abraxas speaks that hallowed and accursed work which is life and death at the same time.
Abraxas begets truth and lying, good and evil, light and darkness, in the same word and in the same act. Wherefore is Abraxas terrible.
It is splendid as the lion in the instant he striketh down his victim.
It is beautiful as a day of spring
It is the great Pan himself and also the small one.
It is Priapos.
It is the monster of the under-world, a thousand-armed polyp, coiled knot of winged serpents, frenzy.
It is the hermaphrodite of the earliest beginning.
It is the lord of the toads and frogs, which live in the water and go up on the land, whose chorus ascends at noon and at midnight.
It is abundance that seeks union with emptiness.
It is holy begetting.
It is love and love's murder.
It is the saint and his betrayer.
It is the brightest light of day and darkest night of madness.
To look upon it, is blindness.
To know it, is sickness
To worship it, is death.
To fear it, is wisdom.
To resist it not, is redemption
God dwells behind the sun, the devil behind the night. What god brings forth out of the light the devil sucks into the night. But Abraxas is the world, its becoming and its passing. Upon every gift that comes from the god-sun the devil lays his curse.
Everything that you entreat from the god-sun begets a deed of the devil.
Everything that you create with the god-sun gives effective power to the devil.
That is terrible Abraxas.
It is the mightiest creature, and in it the creature is afraid of itself.
It is the manifest opposition of creatura to the pleroma and its nothingness.
It is the son's horror of the mother.
It is the mother's love for the son.
It is the delight of the earth and the cruelty of the heavens.
Before its countenance man becomes like stone.
Before it there is no question and no reply.
It is the life of creatura.
It is the operation of distinctiveness.
It is the love of man.
It is the speech of man.
It is the appearance and the shadow of man.
It is illusory reality.
Now the dead howled and raged, for they were unperfected.
The dead filled the place murmuring and said: Tell us of gods and devils, accursed one!
The god-sun is the highest good; the devil the opposite. Thus have you two gods. But there are many high and good things and many great evils. Among these are two god-devils; the one is the BURNING ONE, the other is the GROWING ONE.
The burning one is EROS, who has the form of flame. Flame gives light because it consumes. The growing one is the TREE OF LIFE. It buds, as in growing it heaps up living stuff. Eros flames up and dies. But the tree of life grows with slow and constant increase through unmeasured time.
Good and evil are united in the flame.
Good and evil are united in the increase of the tree.
In their divinity stand life and love opposed.
Innumerable as the host of the stars is the number of gods and devils.
Each star is a god, and each space that a star fills is a devil. But the empty-fullness of the whole is the pleroma. The operation of the whole is Abraxas, to whom only the ineffective stands opposed.
Four is the number of the principal gods, as four is the number of the world's measurements.
One is the beginning, the god-sun.
Two is Eros; for he binds two together and outspreads himself in brightness.
Three is the Tree of Life, for it fills space with bodily forms.
Four is the devil, for he opens all that is closed. All that is formed of bodily nature does he dissolve; he is the destroyer in whom everything is brought to nothing.
For me, to whom knowledge has been given of the mulitplicity and diversity of the gods, it is well. But woe unto you, who replace these incompatible many by a single god. For in so doing you beget the torment which is bred from not understanding, and you mutilate the creature whose nature and aim is distinctiveness. How can you be true to your own nature when you try to change the many into the one! What you do unto the gods is done likewise to you. You all become equal and thus is your nature maimed. Equality shall prevail not for god, but only for the sake of man. For the gods are many, whilst men are few. The gods are mighty and can endure their manifoldness. For like the stars they abide in solitude, parted one from the other by immense distances. But men are weak and cannot endure their mainfold nature. Therefore they dwell together and need communion, that they may bear their separateness. For redemption's sake I teach you the rejected truth, for the sake of which I was rejected.
The mulitplicity of the gods corresponds to the muliplicity of man. Numberless gods await the human state. Numberless gods have been men. Man shares in the nature of the gods. He comes from the gods and goes to god. Thus, just as it does not serve man to reflect upon the pleroma, it is to no avail to worship the multiplicity of the gods. Least of all does it avail to worship the first god, the effective abundance and the summum bonum. By our prayers we can add to it nothing, and from it nothing take; because the effective void swallows all.
The bright gods form the celestial world. It is manifold and infinitely spreading and increasing. The god-sun is the supreme lord of that world. The dark gods form the earth-world. They are simple and infinitely diminishing and declining. The devil is the earth-world's lowest lord, the moon-spirit, satellite of the earth, smaller, colder, and more dead than the earth. There is no difference between the might of the celestial gods and those of the earth. The celestial gods magnify, the earth-gods diminish. Measureless is the movement of both.
The dead mocked and cried: teach us, fool, of the church and the holy communion.
The world of the gods is made manifest in spirituality and sexuality. The celestial ones appear in spirituality, the earthly in sexuality. Spirituality conceives and embraces. It is woman-like and therefore we call it MATER COELESTRIS, the celestial mother. Sexuality engenders and creates. It is man-like, and therefore we call it PHALLOS, the earthly father.
The sexuality of man is more of the earth, the sexuality of woman is more of the spirit.
The spirituality of man is more of heaven, it goes to the greater.
The spirituality of woman is more of the earth, it goes to the smaller.
Lying and devilish is the spirituality of the man which goes to the smaller.
Lying and devilish is the spirituality of the woman which goes to the greater.
Each must go to its own place.
Man and woman become devils one to the other when they do not divide their spiritual ways, for the nature of creatura is distinctiveness. The sexuality of man has an earthward course, the sexuality of woman is spiritual. Man and woman becomes devils one to the other if they do not distinguish their sexuality. Man shall know of the smaller, woman of the greater.
Man shall distinguish himself both from spirituality and from sexuality. He shall call spirituality Mother, and set her between heaven and earth. He shall call sexuality Phallos, and set him between himself and the earth. For the Mother and the Phallos are superhuman daemons which reveal the world of gods. They are for us more effective than the gods, because they are closely akin to our own nature. Should you not distinguish yourself from sexuality and from spirituality, and not regard them as of a nature both above and beyond you, then you are delivered over to them as qualities of the pleroma. Spirituality and sexuality are not your qualities, not things which you possess and contain. But they possess and contain you; for they are powerful daemons, manifestations of the gods, and are, therefore, things which reach beyond you, existing in themselves. No man has a spirituality to himself, or a sexuality to himself. But he stands under the law of spirituality and of sexuality.
No man, therefore, escapes these daemons. You shall look upon them as daemons, and as a common task and danger, a common burden which life has laid upon you. Thus is life for you also a common task and danger, as are the gods, and first of all terrible Abraxas.
Man is weak, therefore is communion indispensable. If your communion is not under the sign of the Mother, then it is under the sign of the Phallos. No communion is suffering and sickness. Communion in everything is dismemberment and dissolution.
Distinctiveness leads to singleness. Singleness is opposed to communion. But because of man's weakness over against the gods and daemons and their invincible law is communion necessary. Therefore shall there be as much communion as is needful, not for man's sake, but because of the gods. The gods force you to communion. As much as they force you, so much is communion needed, more is evil.
In communion let every man submit to others, that communion be maintained for you need it.
In singleness the one man shall be superior to the others, that every man may come to himself and avoid slavery.
In communion there shall be continence.
In singleness there shall be prodigality.
Communion is depth
Singleness is height.
Right measure in communion purifies and preserves.
Right measure in singleness purifies and increases.
Communion gives us warmth, singleness gives us light.
The deamon of sexuality approaches our soul as a serpent. It is half human and appears as thought-desire.
The deamon of spirituality descends into our soul as the white bird. It is half human and appears as desire-thought.
The serpent is an earthy soul, half daemonic, a spirit, and akin to the spirits of the dead. Thus too, like these, she swarms around in the things of earth, making us either fear them or pricking us with intemperate desires. She seeks the company of the dead who are held by the spell of the earth, they who have not found the way beyond that leads to singleness. The serpent is wanton with the devil and with evil spirits; a mischievous tyrant and tormentor, ever seducing to evil company. The white bird is a half-celestial soul of man. He abides with the Mother, descending from time to time. The bird is effective thought. He is chaste and solitary, a messenger of the Mother. He flies high above earth. He commands singleness. He brings knowledge from the distant ones who went before and are perfected. He bears our word above to the Mother. She intercedes, she warns, but against the gods she has no power. She is a vessel of the sun. The serpent goes below and with her cunning she lames the phallic daemon, or else goads him on. She yields up the too crafty thoughts of the earthy one, those thoughts which creep through every soul and cleaves to all things with desirousness. The serpent, doubtless, does not will it, yet she must be of use to us. She flees our grasp, thus showing us the way, which with our human wits we could not find.
With disdainful glance the dead spake: Cease this talk of gods and daemons and souls. At bottom this has long been known to us.
Yet when night was come the dead again approached with lamentable mien and said: There is yet one matter we forgot to mention. Teach us about man.
Man is a gateway, through which from the outer world of gods, daemons, and souls you pass into the inner world; out of the greater into the smaller world. Small and transitory is man. Already he is behind you, and once again you find yourselves in endless space, in the smaller or innermost infinity. At immeasurable distance stands one single Star in the zenith.
This is the one god of this one man. This is his world, his pleroma, his divinity.
In this world is man Abraxas, the creator and the destoyer of his own world.
This Star is the god and the goal of man.
This is his one guiding god. In him goes man to his rest. Toward him goes the long journey of the soul after death. In him shines forth as light all that man brings back from the greater world. To this one god shall man pray.
Prayer increases the light of the Star. It casts a bridge over death. It prepares life for the smaller world and assuages the hopeless desires of the greater. When the greater world waxes cold, burns the Star.
Between man and his one god there stands nothing, so long as man can turn his eyes away from the flaming spectacle of Abraxas.
Man here, god there.
Weakness and nothingness here, there eternally creative power.
Here nothing but darkness and chilling moisture. There wholly sun.
Whereupon the dead were silent and ascended like the smoke above the herdsman's fire, who through the night kept watch over his flock.