Reflections on the
Bible from a Jungian perspective
Gustav Dreifuss Acknowledgment My thanks go first to the many students,
trainees and participants of my lectures who gave me many helpful
suggestions. Special thanks go to my wife Lilo for her valuable commentaries
and corrections of my “Swiss English”. Many thanks to my son Michael for his
patience and help with my PC problems. Finally I am grateful to fate that in
spite of my age (81 years) I was able to finish the manuscript. Table of content Introduction p.
2 1. The Transcendence (Genesis 1:1) p.
4 2. Male and/or female (Genesis 1:27) p. 13 3. Sacrifice: (of Isaac, Gen.22)
p. 26 4. Jealousy (Cain and Abel), Gen.4: 1-15; and
(Jacob and Esau), Gen. 25: 19
ff.) p. 34 5. Suffering (Job) p. 40 6. Ecclesiastes p. 45 7. Escape
(Jonah) p. 57 8. Love (The
Song of Songs) a. Motto
p. 61 b. Introduction p. 62 c. The Song of Songs p.
63 d. Love and Sexuality p.
81 e. Problems
of relationships
p. 96 f The shadow side of Sex and Love p.
103 g. Love for God in the Bible p.
107 h. Death, Love and Sex p.
108 i. The k. Circumcision, Sex and Love p.
119 l. The sexual act as a conjunction of opposites p.
130 m. Conjunction Symbolism in the Kabbalah p. 137 n. Death (Genesis 2:17) p. 146 9.
Bibliography p. 153 Introduction The world of the spirit has become a central
concern. The danger in this development lies in the overvaluation of or
inflation with the spirit to compensate for materialistic attitudes. When the
goal in life for society is money and status, satisfaction of the Ego, the
connection to the transcendent is lost. Jungian psychology insists on the balance of
matter and spirit. In their search for the spirit, people turn to Far Eastern
practices of meditation and forget the mystical practices of the Abrahamic
religions. Thus an estrangement from their roots takes place. Another
negative consequence of spiritual practices can be too much stress of one's
spiritual development, forgetting that one lives together with other people,
near ones, relatives etc. Then the "the spiritual development" is
an Ego-trip, where feeling and consideration for others are lost. There is
only love for oneself, but not for the other! In the course of his inner development, a middle-aged
man wrote the following poem: it expresses well the union of body and soul in
the sexual act. It shows a/o. the union of spirit
and matter by music, by feeling. There's is
music in his body, A melody
in hers, Their
every kiss a song; The body's
rapture frees the soul, A lover's
embrace is a world of deep harmonies. In every
graceful movement, In the
mouth's gentle curve, In a sweet
word spoken, There is
music to be heard When heart
meets heart, And hand
touches hand, When the
senses are stirred to their fullest, Then God
is nearest to man. This is an ode to his anima, to his soul. He
realized the feminine within and he became less critical of his wife who was
a rational, matter of fact type of a woman. Whoever takes part in a rite is connected by it
to the archetypes, especially to the Self. He/she is so to speak anchored in
the transcendence, in the beyond. This gives meaning to life, yet in some way
it is a life without questioning, it is psychologically a life with little or
no awareness. He/she remains somehow unconscious, and unconscious means here
to take life as it is, with or without an authoritative, standard religion:
Standard is what the official religions offer in their various streams:
orthodox, conservative, liberal or reform Judaism. Belonging to a Community
gives to the individual a feeling of security. Psychologically seen, every person needs to
belong to a group, a community, but it does not have to be a religious
community. There are professional groups or gatherings of people with the
same interests, for instance music-lovers or politically orientated groups,
or bridge circles. Yet, the average contemporary Westerner is left without a
means of maintaining contact with the human soul, and religion no longer
expresses it effectively for many people. Personification of the dark side of God in the
Bible is Satan, and of the feminine side, the Shekhinah. Let us now look at the state of the Jewish
religion, of Judaism, at this crucial point in history. If one looks at the
ultra-orthodox Jews, in their black outfit, one gets the feeling that they
live in the same way as their forefathers several hundred years ago. In
general: are religious practices in tune with the change of collective
consciousness, with the Quantum-physics, cybernetics etc. On the one hand
there are people of different religious denominations believing and
practicing and others who are completely alienated from religious practice. How many Jews are living according to Halakhah?
What isֺ the
expression of Judaism for secular Jews? In a changingֺ world where there is a rise in feminine values, the conceptֺ of God as a father has
become obsolete. (Some researchersֺ think that the masculine God-image can be explained as aֺ resistance against the
dominance of the Great Mother.) Theֺ male God-image was necessary for the development ofֺ consciousness,
because the masculine God is identified with
light.ֺ This
father-God demands love, like e.g. in the prayer "Hear O Israel: the
Lord our God, the Lord is One" You should love! Does he demand love
because his siblings, the Jewish people, had not been instilled with love as Godֺ did not have a wife, a
mother for the children, or that hisֺ feelings and capacity for love of his creation, human being
was not enough developed? In consequence of
changes in theֺ collective consciousness God should be called in theֺ archetypal/transpersonal
realm "God/Goddess" or something like “world-parents". Instead
of the father-God, of law and order, ofֺ rationality, e.g. in the prayer "Lord of the world, heֺ reigned alone”, the creators of the world wouldֺ be parents, father and
mother, God and Shekhinah, animus andֺ anima. Thus feminine values, especially the faculty ofֺ transformation, could lead
Judaism away from a static, sterileֺ state to a dynamic, fertile state of change, renewal andֺ rebirth. Next to the traditional believers there is a
largerֺ population who do not affiliate themselves to
any officialֺ
religion as practiced. Yet the search for personal experience of theֺ "beyond" is widespread as can be seen in the fact
that soֺ many people are drawn to mysticism, eastern
cults andֺ psychological personal development. The source
of this trendֺ
is the archetype of the Self. But what is this typical Jewish psychology, and
is there aֺ difference between an Israeli Jew and a Jew
living in theֺ
Diaspora? Jews, who live in the Diaspora in as much asֺ they want to keep their Jewishness, express it in frequentingֺ the synagogue and the Jewish community center. In Judaismֺ like in every organized religion there is the danger ofֺ overestimating formalism and ritual, thus neglecting theֺ individual psyche, namely personal religious experience.
Under “religious” I understand a way to relate to the holy, the numinous, to
the beyond. Jungian psychology is a way for modern Western man to relate to
the irrational by taking the unconscious serious. 1. The Transcendence (Deuteronomy 6: 4-9 and other
places) God is first mentioned in the Bible as the
creator of heaven and earth, the creator of everything, including male and
female (see next chapter). The opposite of the creator, namely the destroyer,
is not mentioned. Seeing the destroyer as belonging to the creator would make
God more complete and more true and complete with
regard the biblical stories that follow. Here are some examples of the
destructive side or impulses of the Godhead, God is about to destroy Isaac,
the son of Abraham (Dreifuss, 1971 passim) and inflicts great pain on
Abraham, the father, and Isaac, the son. He lets Cain kill Abel, his brother
(see chapter 4); he destroys many people and only saves Noah and his kin. Why
did he not do everything to talk to and change the “bad people” of the time? And this ambivalent God demands love. Whenever I read this passage, something in me
revolts. I have ambivalent feelings. It is the command to love God. Can one command love? A command often effects the contrary, because love should be there, and
not be dependent on a command! Can one demand love? The strict father-God
demands love! Why should the son or the daughter fulfil this demand? Out of
fear for punishment? What can be a reason to love when not for fear? One can
love the Lord, the creator, because of his beautiful creation: nature,
animals. But is man with his shadow such a beautiful creation? One has to
fear this creator also as he has in himself a terrific force of destruction:
earthquakes, storms, typhoons, fire etc. Also man, created in his image, is
creative and destructive. God demands love: “And thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy might”.
((Deuteronomy 6: 4-9) Can one demand love as this strict father commands? Do I have to love God? But why should I love
him? He demands discipline with regard to keeping his laws. Obedience of men
is required. He also asks for sacrifice of animals. He enjoys the smell of
the burnt animals. Does he love me? God, the father, is apparently not
capable to love unconditionally like the mother who loves her newborn child.
Is God's creation so wonderful? Yes, the mountains, the lakes, the rivers,
the woods are a source of love for the creator. But what about the
destructive forces in nature? Tornadoes, Vulcan’s, floods, and avalanches, is
a source of fear of the creator. What can we say about God’s creation of man?
Yes, man is truly a sublime creation. The body functions when it is healthy.
The complicated brain, the soul of man, creates astonishing works of arts and
science. Or is it the soul, the psyche
of transcendental origin that creates? God is one as creator and destroyer. And this
God, this father, creates without a woman. He has overcome biology. His
creations, animals, humans, need two for procreation, a male and a female. Is
it the summit of creativity, if man, father-God creates without a
mother-Goddess? Or has God integrated his feminine side, his
anima, the Sophia or Shekhinah, so that his creation is like a work of art,
an outcome of his integrated personality Is it the highest form of love, to love God in
spite of the fact that he creates and destroys? To be aware of his
ambivalence and yet to love. Or to repress his negative sides and not make
him responsible for them? Then he is only good and the bad is either Satan or
the devil, or better still-me, man, woman, the human being. Yes, there is a
feeling that the world, God's kingdom, will last for ever-but is it so
glorious? Von Franz (1994, p. 28) states that there is “terrorism,
criminality, lack of justice for many individuals in many states…The feminine
principle could mediate between the opposites”. She further asks (p.92) “is
ethic an achievement of the conscious man and his culture-or is there an
ethos already in the unconscious, in the preconscious structure of man per
se? a natural morality in fairy tales”. In this
connection I want to quote Von Franz (1990, p. 89) again “the extraverted
thinking type and his introverted inferior feeling: a naive belief in peace,
compassion and justice. Could he explain what he understands under justice?
The subjective element remains in the background of his personality.” He will
have to develop his inferior feeling and give up his naivete. This is a part
of his inner development towards consciousness, in the process of
individuation, and belongs to the integration of the shadow (so far projected). Awareness
of one's other side is a central work in development analysis. Projecting
this insight into the Godhead would make it clear that God is a union of
light and dark. Just as in human relationship where one has to accept the
partner, the friend, the wife, the husband, oneself with the dark side, the
shadow, so one has to accept God in his antinomy. Loving a partner, a friend,
in-spite or with his dark side is surely a higher form of love, higher than
being in love when one is not aware of the shadow-side of the beloved and of
oneself. This brings us to some general reflections on
the concept and image of God. It is the soul that creates the God-image. God
is a name for that which has no name, what cannot be named. But it is the
imagination of man, which gave this name! Symbolically, God is an image of
the unknowable, of the mystery of existence. The human psyche, the
imagination, the unconscious, has created a myth around the unknowable. Likewise, the human psyche has created
different myths with regard to the immortality of the Soul. (In all religions
the terms God or Gods are a product of the human psyche, from the standpoint
of the "non-believer" in the traditional God.) In the Bible
(Tenakh, "Old" Testament) the dark side is contained in God.
Therefore one should love the bright side of God and be afraid of his dark
side. The fact that God is often
referred to as a "good God" is an attempt to exclude the "bad
God" from consciousness, to repress the bad! But "God"
includes the good and the bad. Personified, Satan is opposite the (good) God.
Hurwitz (1993, passim), in an excellent paper related to the dark face of
God. He says, "the Kabbalists Image of God
clearly shows a dark, evil side." Hurwitz also stresses the fact that
the mature person "has no alternative but to decide from one case
to the next how he will deal with evil and fit it into his overall personality".
With regard to the roots of evil, he continues: "almost all Kabbalists
are of the opinion that evil has a dual root, in man...and in the divine
sphere". All this action took place in a spiritual sphere, in which the
distant, unknown God-whom the Kabbalists call en Sof-had developed in his ten
aspects. He further writes that in the Zohar, the classic work of the
Kabbalah, differing opinions about evil are found side by side... He further
states that in Isaac Lurja's Gnostic-cosmogonic mythology, the problem of
evil is even more fundamentally complicated and mentions his theory of
Zimzum, a restriction or limitation, by which evil intruded into creation.
Also in Sabbatianism, the Teaching of Zimzum is important. (Zimzum is a basic
Kabalistic creation myth.) The mutual dependency of God and man in the act
of salvation gives dignity to man, who recognizes "both his personal
shadow and the dark side of the divine" (Hurwitz, p. 175). In psychology
this is the mutual dependency of Ego and Self. Rivkah Schärf Kluger's
"Satan in the Old Testament" (1967) is an excellent essay dealing
with the shadow of God. Speaking psychologically of God always means
the God-image, in a certain time and in a certain religion. Yet, to
facilitate the writing and in order to make it more emotional, one often says
God, although it is the God-image, the Self. The Self is a very unclear term. It is used on
the one hand as the center of the personality, showing itself in dreams with
the aspect of wholeness (Mandala). It expresses itself in different symbols,
it is dynamic and in relation to the Ego. Yet, on the other hand, it
expresses itself in symbols, which stand for the indestructibility of the
Self, or of the eternal and unchangeable aspect of God. God (and the Self) therefore has to be seen in
different aspects: 1.
Permanent,
eternal, timeless, indestructible: the mystery of creation of life, but
symbolized fi. As rock or gold. 2. Changeable limited in time: God is
experienced as transforming himself. Example: The God at the beginning of the
Akedah (Gen.22), demanding the sacrifice of Isaac, is different from the God
at the end of the story, when he renounces the sacrifice through the angel. A
transformation in God has taken place. The Self can also be seen in its energetic
aspect or as energy-pattern, as cosmic energy in all living beings and in
vegetation. It is also an unlimited energy source, responsible for the
heartbeat, for life in general. 3. Masculine and feminine in God: In the
monotheistic God-image the feminine, the mother, is missing. God so to speak
creates by self- copulation. The Self as inner voice is a superordinate
totality to the conscious Ego. The experience of God,
or better of the numinous is beyond words or concepts. God is a symbol, an
image for the Self, for the unknown and the unknowable. When I try to clarify my relationship to God, I
feel that I am nothing, that God, the Self is everything. But if I don't
exist, if I do not reflect, the Self is nothing. This is the paradoxical
truth. Energetically, there is a positive (creative)
and negative (destructive) aspect of the God-image, the Self. The numinous
contains opposite elements. And Deuteronomy VI, 4-9 says "And thou shalt
love the Lord they God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy might....". Deuteronomy VI,2: “that thou mightest fear the Lord thy God and also
Leviticus”, XIX,14: ...thou shalt fear thy God: I am the Lord (Yahweh). Regarding
the importance of the Bible for the monotheistic religions, I want to quote
some important passages relevant to love and fear: Ps
111,10: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning
of wisdom;" According to Kaplan (p. 37): "The Kabbalists say that
the most basic qualities of human emotionality are love and fear. Together
they enable man to interact meaningfully with the world around him."
Realizing the smallness of the ego opposite the Lord, the Self hinders
inflation and the wisdom is then a religious attitude towards life. In
institutional religion God's love (mercy) for man is dependent on observing
the commandments: Exodus XX, 6: ”and showing mercy
of unto the thousandth generation of them that love me and keep my
commandments". God's love for man is not unconditional. If man loves
God, God will love man and The
love of one’s neighbor is stressed in Leviticus 19:18: "...love thy
neighbor as thyself". This is the most important test of man's love for
God, which, according to Rabbi Akiba, a Tannaite in the first century, is the
supreme commandment of the Torah. Ideally, love for man is also love for God,
from the point of view of religion. Psychologically, to be at peace with
oneself, to accept one's fate is the precondition for love of one's neighbor.
This acceptance is difficult to attain, but possible in the individuation
process. Hillel,
also of the first century, said: "Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving
peace, pursuing peace, loving one's fellow creatures and bringing them near
the Law" (Aboth 1:12). And when Hillel was asked to define the essence
of Law, he expressed it in human feelings, not of reward and punishment:
"What is hateful to thee, do not do to thy fellow," in other words,
to deal with others as fairly and as lovingly as with oneself. It
is interesting (and sad) to note that this command of the Bible has not
become the foremost mode of behavior in the three monotheistic religions. The
way “God” is used, is a misfortune. Each of these
three religions believes his God-image is the only true God. The result of
this was and is war between Jews, Christians and Muslims. But even in the
respective religions there is infighting between those who adhere to their
God. The war of 30 years (1618-1648), the fight between Catholics and
Protestants, the wars between Shiites and Sunniest-to mention only a few. In
Judaism there is antagonism between secular and believers, and even between
orthodox and conservative as well as reform movements. An appropriate symbol
for the common origin of mankind is the Anthropos- the primordial man (“Adam
Kadmon or Adam Rishon”), in whom the whole mankind is united in a
feeling-connection. Jaffe (1967, p. 128ff) deals extensively with this
problem. The change to a new attitude is a personal as well as a collective
problem. Then, the basic command ‘to love thy neighbor” will be put into
practice. I know that this is rather utopia or naivete. Man’s psychology, his
power-drive and his fanaticism are stronger than his capacity to love and to
compromise. In
the Kabbalah, the one, abstract and transcendental En-Sof, a symbol of the
Self, manifests itself in ten different Sefiroth (aspects), which are
connected and united in the Sefiroth-tree, a symbol of the Self. They are
united and connected by the principle of love! This psychological
interpretation reveals the feminine principle within the teaching of the
Sefiroth. Furthermore, the ten Sefiroth belong either to a masculine or
feminine principle, yet the Sefiroth of the middle column are
"neutral", i.e. not masculine and not feminine. Psychologically one can be aware of one's own
creative and destructive side and of both these sides in God. Satan
personifies the dark side of the personality. The duality is "bright
God" and "dark Satan", "good God" and "bad
Satan", psychologically a bright and dark aspect. Can one love this
Lord, this God, who is so demanding and makes his love dependent on the
fulfillment of his commands? He loves under his conditions! Who has
unconditional love for the children? Only the mother,
or a motherly energy which can also be in man! In order to accomplish this
kind of love, God has to use his motherly loving side and apply it to his
creation, to man. Human experience is clearly one of a good and a
bad fate. It is formulated in the words: One should love and fear God. God is that power or energy which cannot be
understood rationally, but which stands behind all things. The Jewish
religion as practiced today as well as the traditional exegesis of the
scripture does not satisfy my religious needs. The traditional explanations
of the Bible don't touch me. Therefore I try to understand them from a
psychological, symbolical point of view. This symbolic attitude enables me to
understand and experience their meaning within the individuation process. If
we take the basic Jungian model of the personality, of Ego and Shadow, of Ego
and Animus/Anima, as a model for what is called God, it follows naturally
that the monotheistic God-image, the Jungian Self, contains an archetypal
dark side and a feminine side. Isaiah 45,7 relates to opposites within God as
follows: “I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am the Lord, that doeth all these things.” Here the image of God is one of totality, in
the sense that YHWH (Yahweh) contains the Good as well as the Evil. This is
true for the whole Tenakh, the "Old Testament". Von Franz (1994,
p.165) expands on this problem of opposites of the God-image, which she calls
"overwhelming and not moral" and continues that at the beginning
only individuals like David or Job began to suffer from it. My problem with the word God stems mainly from
my critic of the often-used connection of God with good: the good God. This
means psychologically an exclusion of the opposite, that God is also bad! It
seems to be the best to replace the word God with fate that is what I use in
therapy. One has to accept fate, to know that there are many things, which
cannot be changed. It is hard inner work to accept one’s fate, and
also to accept the relative weakness of the Ego to change fate. In analysis
one has to find an individual attitude, a religious attitude to accept the
opposites, the paradox of the numinous. This goes together with love and fear
of one’s fate. Now I want to add a
quotation from Neumann as a transition to some personal material. Neumann
(1952, p. 62) writes that talks with the anima or animus and other inner
figures correspond to individual rituals. Active imagination is an
interrogation of numina, the divine powers or spirits. One looks for an inner
guide. (Hannah, 1981) My active imagination is
from August 3rd 2001 till June 6th 2002. The following are quotations from my diary: 3.8.01: Yesterday I was in a little crisis
because I was blocked in my writing. I try to portrait my state of mind in an
image: I see the gaping emptiness. My associations are emptiness, death and a
depressive state. Then, in the emptiness appears a beautiful figure of a
woman, in a white, flowing gown. “Don’t be afraid, I am the eternal life. You
still have good hours ahead of you and can write, be creative. Enjoy it!” 21.9.01: The woman says: “I love you. You lived
truly, you fulfilled yourself, and you go on doing this, within the frame of
your possibilities. You will enter into the great mystery of life and death.
You have sown much love and you go on doing this. This is the most important in life.
When you are in contact with the feminine, bodily, psychically, spiritually,
then you give and receive. Now you are in contact with me, with your soul.
Breathe deeply and let the spirit, the ru’ah, flow
into you. I breath, I sense the spirit. Sui-mi, a
symbol of my Self, says, Through her, your soul, you are now in contact with
me.” I say, “oh spirit, I know you are the eternal creator, only with you and
my soul do I find meaning in this life.” 5.2.02: In a dream, a Chinese woman had appeared.
In my active imagination she says: “Take time for you immortal soul.” Then I
see a bubbling well and think that even if I shall be no more, this well will
bubble on. Then I see myself on my way to my clinic (a 10 minutes walk). I
see in my inner eye many people of the neighborhood, and there is a lot of
traffic. Everything goes its usual course. Then I hear my mother, sick unto
death, say with resignation: when I shall die, everything will go on anyway.
This is correct, but I have not resigned. And again I see the bubbling well.
Now I am myself a drop of water. Thus I am in an eternal cycle. Then my
doubter announces: “Silly stuff! You will die, and that’s all there is.
Nothing will remain from you. Children and grandchildren will live their
lives, may be they will once think of their father and grandfather, but this
is not relevant. You will be buried-that’s it.” Then appears Sui-mi. He says,
“leave the speculations on life after death. Lay stress on life, the life you
lived and what you are still able to live today. Accept what you
cannot know. Life after death, it is a mystery. And hope that dying will be
easy.” 15.2.02: After an impression in a dream, where
I saw again the Chinese woman: I say: “What do you want from me that you
appear in my dream?” She answers: “I want to give you inner peace so that you
can approach death with confidence. You have lived your life well. Now you
may be tranquil and composed. Read again the secret of the Golden Flower and
the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Take time for you immortal soul.” (Hearing
these words I start to breathe deeply and regularly.) Then the word “time”
occurs to me and then “eternity”. My time is over. But I still live in time.
She says, “be still and content, a long and fulfilled life is behind you.” I
breathe deeply. I think of (Graf Karlfried von) Duerkheim, who in his book
wrote about breaking through to the being. Being, soul, spirit. (In the of the Golden Flower I am a/o. impressed by the words
patience, deepening. Spirit is more than intellect.) 17.2.02: in an active Imagination I once again
meet Sui-mi. He wears a robe like a king or priest. His stature radiates. I
kneel down and exclaim, “oh you great Sui-mi who outlives time, that millions
of years you are and will always exist. You revealed yourself to me, I sense your greatness, your wisdom. Tell me, how can
I still find meaning at my age, with my reduced forces?” (I breathe deeply,
am excited.) Sui-mi: “Look back, time and again, what you
experienced, and of what you suffered, and what you have given to human
beings in your work and in general in your relationships.” 4.4.02: In a meditation I see Yahweh and
Shekhinah in eternal embrace. 4.6.02: In an earlier imagination appeared a
“sunwoman”. I say, “You good sunwoman, help me to bear and
accept my pains. (I had fallen to the ground) and my age, my tiredness, my
occasional passivity.” She: “You have lived a long life, look back and
be content. As a woman I gave you a life full of
sun. The light, the spirit, comes and came from your soul, from your feminine
side, from your relationships to women who gave meaning to your life. In such
a way you added to the traditional fathergod the mothergodess. In such a way
you realize yourself, you have become round. You are man-woman. You
understand, you have empathy, you can love. I am sorry that I cannot procure
you the kiss of death-this is not in my power. But I try to give you inner
strength to endure whatever will happen.” 7.6.02: Again the sunwoman appears and says:
“From your soul comes your spirit. The depth of your soul is your value, not
the intellect. This is the meaning of your life. Love and feeling you have
given to many, and you have also received. Through
love and warmth you help yourself and others to bear the up and down of
life.” I ask, “what more?” She: “You are near the end of your life; every day
with bearable pain is a gift!” 2. Male and/or Female The feminine side of God can be deducted from Genesis I, 27: "And God created man in His own image, In the image of God created He him; Male and female created He them." In this version of the creation of man, the female is not created
from the rib of man (Genesis III, 22), but "directly" by God in his
image. Within the
monotheistic religions the feminine has no representation in the godly realm;
there is only a father-god. The affirmation of the bisexuality of Adam
Kadmon, the primordial man, logically implies the bisexuality of the divine
figure. In Christianity, however, the feminine is more represented: Mary, the
mother of Jesus, was even raised to heaven in the 1950 dogma of the Catholic
Church. From a biological and psychological point of view there cannot be a
man (masculine energy) alone as creator, as only sperm and egg, man and woman
(feminine energy), can make a child. Jung in the above quotation called this
cosmic creative energy love. If we could understand God as father/mother, as
Logos/Eros, as God/Shekhinah, as masculine/feminine energy, as animus/anima,
we could come nearer to a psychological and biological understanding. Love as
a connecting, creative principle of Father and Mother (of the Father and
Mother archetype) comes close to the mystery of all creation. The following dream shows how the feminine principle is elevated: An Israeli woman was married for many
years and they lived in Psychologically, with regard to the individuation process as
described by Jung, love and acceptance of the inner opposite gender (animus
and anima) are necessary, but difficult because of the ambiguity of the
archetype. Also the Self as God-image contains light and dark, feminine and
masculine energies and is therefore a "coniunctio oppositorum", a
union of opposites. Psychologically love of the Self can be attained by
integration of one's shadow and of one's opposite gender, which corresponds
to the integration of the dark side of God, of the dark side of the Self. As
man was created in the image of God, according to the Bible, there is a
parallel between the integration of one's shadow and of integration and
acceptance of the dark side of the Self. This dark side can be further
understood as the opposite of creation, namely as destruction and death. (God
is a creator [birth] and also a destroyer [death]). The soul cannot accept
death as the end of all and therefore produces images of life after death, of
resurrection of the dead, of reincarnation. Accepting, loving one's life and
fate (amor fati) is a central problem in the individuation process. The Jewish God is called father, but where is mother, the Goddess? In
a changing world where there is a rise in feminine values the concept of God
as a father has become obsolete. This is also expressed in writing
"he/she", not only "he" as it was common till some years
ago. In consequence of these changes one should say "God/Goddess"
or something like "world parents". Yet, all these names are
man-made, the fruit of our imagination, our fantasy. The mystery of life
remains. It could be called "elan vital" according to Bergson or the
"transcendental Self" according to Jung or the "En Sof"
according to the Kabbalah. It is life-energy or cosmic energy. With regard to the feminine principle in Judaism, one can trace
several stages of development: 1. The age of the patriarchs: there seems to be no place for the feminine
principle. 2. The age of the prophets: the usual image is of God as Lord and
husband and the people of "I remember for thee the affection of thy
youth, The love of thine espousals; How you wentest after Me in the wilderness, In a land that was not sown." The life and message of Hosea especially are a living symbol of this
relationship: he took, according to God's command, a whore for a wife, and
she and her life are a paradigm for the relationship of God and the people of
"And the Lord said unto me: 'Go yet, love a woman beloved of her
friend and an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of And in Ezekiel l6, 8: “Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon
thee, and, behold, thy time was the time of love, I spread my skirt over
thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou
becamest mine.” 3. In the time of the Mishna, the "Song of Songs" was added
to the Bible only when Rabbi Akiba interpreted it as a song of love between
God and his people. (See below on “The Song of Songs”) In Jungian psychology, the Self, the central archetype, is a/o. defined as "union of opposites". From an
energetic point of view it is the source of life, the child born through the
union of man and woman, the combined masculine and feminine energy. The
experience of the Self is an ongoing process of this union in individuation
as described by Jung. Within the Jewish and Islamic tradition the feminine has no
representation in the godly realm. In Christianity the feminine is
represented in Mary, the mother of Jesus. This image
of a male/female divine being finds no expression in normative Judaism, but
many traces of it remain in Kabalistic sources. In Tiqqune Zohar, for
example, we can find this comment on Gen. 1:27: In His own
image: It is concerning the soul that the Bible states,
and God created man in His own image, which means in the likeness of the
Shekinah. Moreover, it is with reference to man's soul that we read: only
because of that image doth man walk (Ps. 39,7), for
when the soul departs from man, he can move no more. Moshe Idel
considers the concept of “du partzufim"- the dual nature of the
primordial man (Adam Qadmon), the “higher” man to whom the first man, Adam
ha-rishon, is the earthly correspondent and emphasizes the frequent presence
of esoteric and sexual motifs in the theosophical Kabbalah. Like Hurwitz
(1952, p.175) Idel (1988a, p.128/29) draws attention to the original bisexual
nature of the primordial man, who was later divided into two separate beings. “It seems
that the two divine attributes are regarded as corresponding to the bisexual
nature of primordial man. He was later divided into masculine and feminine
entities ... The first androgynous stage is obvious in the biblical story;
these two attributes seem to have existed on a higher level or on the divine
level prior to their separation.” What Idel,
according to earlier sources, says is particularly significant, from a
psychological point of view. The bisexuality of Adam Kadmon, the primordial
man, logically implies the bisexuality of the divine figure. The mystery of life and creation cannot be explained by masculine
energy alone, or by God, the father, but only by the mystery of the union of
"Father and Mother in Love", of the union of God and the Shekhinah.
From a biological and psychological point of view there cannot be a Father (masculine
energy) alone as creator, as only sperm and egg, man and woman, can make a
child! Jung in the above quotation called this cosmic creative energy
"love". One can also see an elevation of the feminine principle in the
massive resettling of the Biblical land in the last century. There are many explanations for modern Zionism, but it is surely not
only a social reaction to anti-Semitism, pogroms and Holocaust. "Return
to Zion" (Shivat Zion) expresses the longing of almost 2000 years to
reestablish a national home of the Jewish people in the holy-land, to bring
an end to the existence in the Diaspora. It is also the love for The return of the people to the Biblical land corresponds, in the
archetypal (heavenly) realm to the union of God with the Shekhinah, which is
an adequate symbol for masculine/feminine transcendental metaphysical
reality. In the symbol of the union of God and the Shekhinah, according to
the Kabbalah, the feminine principle, the mother, is elevated to the level of
the masculine principle, the father. " Zionism as manifested in the State of Israel has manifold meanings: a
holy-land, a Jewish homeland, a refuge for the persecuted Jewish people. Jews
of many different beliefs live in Jews living in In the minds and hearts of many Israelis a strong link exists between
contents of the Bible and the land. The state of The elevation of the feminine principle, of the woman, can also be
seen in some religious practices and in local politics. In the reform
movement, in Jewish renewal trends, in community councils and activities,
women are taking part, which only a few decades ago was “impossible”. The
openness to the spirit, the readiness to receive it in meditation, in dreams
and active imagination also shows an opening to the irrational in
"passivity". The soul, the anima, is ready to receive the spirit. The return of the feminine principle in our time: This is not the
place to go into the history of modern Zionism, from Herzl onwards. Besides
social reasons there is also a deeper archetypal layer to it. Although situated in the Middle East, Here I want to add a short deviation to some philosophical
deliberations. The philosophical concept of Pluralism (Leibnitz, Herbart) is the
hypothesis that the world consists of a multitude of independent separate
elements. The opposite concept is Monism. This is used to classify those
philosophical systems that postulate one source of reality of the world, like
the “Substance” of Spinoza, the "Absolute" of Schopenhauer, the
“will” of Hartmann. Between Pluralism and Monism stands Dualism, the system of Duality,
which postulates two principles, such as good and bad, spirit and matter. In
the religions we can make similar distinctions: polytheism postulates a
multitude of divine beings, monotheism one divine principle, dualism two
divine principles, namely good and bad (The ancient Persian religion). Psychologically we can say that these philosophical systems and the
different religions are archetypal images of the one, the two or the many.
This means that the one, the two and the many are realities in the psyche.
According to the individual inclination and/or the cultural canon prevalent
at a certain time and place in history, the individual will identify with one
of those systems. The other two are repressed or unconscious, In order to
explain the consequences of these facts I want to say a few words about the
Jungian conception of conscious and unconscious. We commonly assume that our will is always at our disposal and that
the Ego is the whole personality. But we know from everyday life that this is
not so. Ever so often it happens that we do something in a certain emotional
state and then ask ourselves if that was really me who did this? It was not!
We are overcome by something that in retrospect looks to us as being alien.
This state of affairs leads us to the conclusion that our personality
contains parts or "sub personalities" that in certain circumstances
may push the center of our conscious personality (the Ego) aside and take
over temporarily. At times, therefore, the Ego is overpowered by subconscious
forces or energies, which the conscious personality does not accept. These
psychological facts make us realize that man is a complex being: he is at the
same time one and many, Ego and sup-personalities (complexes). As it is very difficult to live with the knowledge that there are
many sub-personalities in addition to the personality or Ego, we usually
repress these and identify completely with the Ego. In doing so we get into a
state where only one truth exists-namely my truth. We are possessed by the
archetypal image of the one, become shallow and one-dimensional. We are out
of conflict and doubt and we completely identify with a group, an idea, a
theory or a religion. We are then convinced, as individuals or groups, that
our truth is the only truth and expect it to be the truth of others or even
of everybody. Thus we exclude the possibilities of other truths. Psychologically, the shadow, or dark negative side of this one-sided
view is usually manifested in intolerance, hate, aggression and inhuman
behavior. In this conviction of having found "the only truth" so to
speak, we do not deal with our doubt, which albeit unconscious, is always
there in the depth of our soul. This doubt, which endangers our good feeling
of being at one with ourselves, is repressed and appears projected unto
others. We want to solve the conflicts by eliminating the other standpoint. The
bearer of the other standpoint becomes our enemy, whom we hate, try to
convince and convert to our own truth. The negative emotions against the
other who endangers our oneness with ourselves may accumulate so much
aggressive energy that it may lead to persecution or even murder. Acceptance of the doubts in our soul and the acknowledgement of our
own inner opposites are preconditions for preventing projections and
furthering tolerance. This acceptance of our own diversities, our
sub-personalities, our complexes, is the basis for accepting pluralism. A
pluralistic society that allows for many different opinions, principles and
ways of life in one people is based on the acknowledgement of the complexity,
diversity and conflicting tendencies within the individual soul. People must
learn to relate to each other with patience, tolerance and acceptance. If we apply these psychological insights to the theme of the unity of
the Jewish people in its diversity, we can say that there is
one people, one Jewish religious background. We are all descendants of
Abraham, but we may be secular, reform, conservative or orthodox. There is
one Jewish people living in We can describe this source of life as the center point of a circle.
A circle is by definition a curve consisting of points at a given distance
from the center point. All points are equal in relation to this center. If we
look at the points or dots as representing individuals, groups or peoples,
they are, although different from each other, equal with regard to their
relationship to the center, to the energy, and all people draw their
life-energy from this source. The Jewish people are very diverse. There are orthodox, conservative,
reform and secular Jews, living in My "falling out of faith" in the traditional Jewish God
caused me some trouble and pain, especially before I could find an individual
way of relating to the transcendence. Not only could I no longer attend the
service in the synagogue, but I felt also estranged from the Jewish
community. Analysis is a lonely way, but it also helps one to "find
yourself", to find a new group of peoples having had similar analytical
experiences. The more I could accept myself, the better I could accept and
relate to people of different religious affiliation, in short, to find a
relationship and acceptance to everybody, yet being aware of the fact that
there are "bad people" whom one has to avoid and not accept! A
considerable part of every analysis is devoted to the problem of one's
shadow, that side of the personality, which is often projected, because we
have a problem to integrate our inferior side. In my opinion, the God-image
is a product of the human soul, of the imagination, at a certain time of
history and therefore changes with the development of consciousness. In the
same way the different mythologies are products of man's imagination, of his
unconscious. The mystery of existence of man, of the world, of life and
death, these secrets are the source for man’s imagination with regards the
unknowable. The soul gave names to this mystery, and created anthropomorphic
entities like the Greek gods or the Jewish and Christian God, because the
nameless nothing cannot be endured by the soul. Scholem (1961, pp.139 and
140) discusses the anthropomorphism of God. He states that every mention of
God can only use human images. To clothe Divinity with a human form belongs
to the living heart of religion just as the feeling that every mention of God
transcends the reality of the divine being. Scholem then quotes Beno Jacob
(1934, p. 58) who says that “God spoke” is no smaller anthropomorphism than “the
hand of God. A divine manifestation (theophany) is the hearing of the voice,
the most spiritual of all sensual manifestations. Psychologically speaking,
the soul reveals itself in images. For me, God is that power or energy which cannot be understood rationally,
but which stands behind all things. The Jewish religion as practiced today as
well as the traditional exegesis of the scripture does not satisfy my
religious needs. The traditional explanations of the Bible don't touch me.
Therefore I try to understand them from a psychological, symbolical point of
view. This symbolic attitude enables me to understand and experience their
meaning within the individuation process. If we take the basic Jungian model
of the personality, of Ego and Shadow, of Ego and Animus/Anima, as a model
for what is called God, it follows naturally that the monotheistic God-image,
the Jungian Self, contains an archetypal dark side and a feminine side. Time
and again, I am touched when an analysand brings a painting containing a
symbol of the Self or has a great dream. Let me give you two examples: Mrs.
U. was born into an orthodox Jewish family. She studied art in The mystery
of life and of the creation cannot be explained by the single male energy, or
with an image of God-the-Father, but needs to be explained rather through the
mystery of the union of love of the Father and Mother, the union of God and
Shekhinah. In biological terms it cannot be purely the Father (male energy)
who brings about the creation, since only sperm and ovum, man and woman can
create a child! Jung called this cosmic creative energy which unites father
and mother (or the archetypes of the Father and the Mother) Love (Eros).
Jaffe (1989, p. 353-354).
It is an energy, which is involved in the mystery of every creation. Jung
deals with this theme particularly in Aion (CW 9,II, par. 20 ff.)
where he discusses the syzygìe of animus and anima
and he uses it again in the symbol of the quaternity of marriage (cf. CW16,
passim). If we can
bring ourselves to conceive God as Father and Mother, Logos and Eros, God and
Shekhinah, as male energy and female energy, Animus and Anima, then we can
come closer to a psychological understanding. With respect
to the process of individuation outlined by Jung, love and the acceptance of
one's internal sexual counterpart are both necessary, yet at the same time
extremely difficult, due to the ambivalence of the archetype. Even the Self,
in as far as it is an image of God, contains within itself light and shadow,
female and male, and is thus a coniunctio
oppositorum, or a union of opposites. The individual reaches love
of the Self by means of integration of the personal shadow and the sexual
counterpart (Anima or Animus), that corresponds to the shadow part of the
Self. If humans were created in the image of God, as the Bible states, then
the integration of the individual shadow is a parallel to the integration and
acceptance of the dark side of the Divine. This dark side can also be seen as
the opposite of Creation, that is, as destruction and death. God is both
creator (birth) and destroyer (death). Acceptance
and love for the individuals own life and own fate (amor fati) represents the central part
of the process of individuation. From the
biological point of view, a man (male energy) and a woman (female energy)
create a child. The child represents the third element, the fruit of the
sexual union, of love and sex. In the Bible, however, the creator is God, a
male subject, the Father. "In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth" (Gen. 1:1). The
female element is not present. What we have is a patriarchal vision: God, the
male, the Father, is the unique creator, the Goddess, the female, the Mother
is missing. But this is the mystery of creation in patriarchal monotheism. Genesis 1:27
states: "And God created man in His own image, in the image of God
created He him; male and female created He them". According to this
version, God created male and female at the same time and both in his image
and likeness: men and woman are thus on an equal level. However, there is
another version of the creation, which is given shortly after this first one,
and in this woman is created from a rib of the man (Gen. 2:21-22). In this
version the story is quite different and the sense of equality is lost.
"And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he
slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the place with flesh
instead thereof. And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the man, made
He a woman, and brought her unto the man". If we
compare these two versions, we can see that they represent two very different
conceptions of the woman's position. In one version the woman is formed from
one of the man's ribs, while in the other God creates her in exactly the same
way as the man, at exactly the same level. The fact that both man and woman
are created in God's image implies that God is a being, which is both male and female, not simply male. This is the
interpretation given also in the Kabbalah: “Male and
female created he them. From this we learn that every figure which does not
comprise male and female elements is not a true and proper [higher] figure”
(Zohar I, 55b). It continues “...and so we have laid down in the
esoteric teaching of the Mishna. Observe this. God does not place His abode
in any place where male and female are not found together...”. Cf. also Zohar I, 22a: “A man should be complete - that
is, be like God - in being both 'male and female'”, in Goodenough 1958,
vol.8, p.18: “The Zohar goes on to describe human intercourse as a direct
rite by which one shares in the metaphysical unity of the aspects of
divinity.” In his
comment on this portion of Genesis, Kaplan p. 67 states, "This clearly
implies that male and female together form the image of God". And he
adds that the reason for this is clear since a man and a woman are able to do
that which is closest to God, that is, create a life. "The power to
conceive a child is so God-like that the Talmud states that when a man and a
woman create a child, God himself is their third partner". It is
interesting to note that the Kabbalists interpretation and the Jungian
interpretation are here very similar, if not quite identical. The divine
image proposed by Kaplan is clearly that of a Father/Mother. By calling God
the third partner in the creation of a child, Kaplan alludes to the mystery
inherent in the creation of a child. This image of
a male/female divine being finds no expression in normative Judaism, but many
traces of it remain in Kabalistic sources. And God
created man in His own image. It is with reference to man's soul that we
read, “Only because of that image doth man walk” (Ps. 39,7),
for when the soul departs from man, he can move no more. A midrashic
tradition is also interesting in this context. A legend tells that "Man
and wife were one flesh and two faces; then God sawed the body into two
bodies and made to each of them a back. (Bin Gorion, p. 66) Moshe Idel
considers the concept of “du partzufim"- the dual nature of the
primordial man. He is also very often represented as a tree, which includes
the ten divine attributes. The Adam Qadmon, the original man, is a symbol of
the Self; it is the base idea, the archetype, what human individuals really
are. The “higher”
man to whom the first man, Adam ha-rishon, is the earthly correspondent. Idel
emphasizes the frequent presence of esoteric and sexual motifs in the
theosophical Kabbalah. Like Hurwitz (p. 175), also Idel (p. 128) draws
attention to the original bisexual nature of the primordial man, who was
later divided into two separate beings. And he continues (p. 129): “It seems
that the two divine attributes are regarded as corresponding to the bisexual
nature of primordial man. He was later divided into masculine and feminine
entities ... The first androgynous stage is obvious in the biblical story;
these two attributes seem to have existed on a higher level or on the divine
level prior to their separation.” What Idel
(p. 128) says is particularly significant from a psychological point of view,
since his affirmation of the bisexuality of Adam Qadmon, the primordial man,
logically implies the bisexuality of the divine figure. With regard
to bisexuality, Jung (vol.16, par. 454), writes: “Mercurius is
the hermaphrodite par excellence. From all this it may be gathered that the
queen stands for the body and the King for the spirit, but that both are
unrelated without the soul, since this is the vinculum (bond) which holds them together. If no bond of
love exists, they have no soul.” Only the
bond between King and Queen, between God and Shekhinah, the vinculum that is also love and soul, can
create the hermaphrodite, a symbol of the integrated personality. Love and
soul are therefore the principle beyond God, or, in other words, God is love
and soul. God and the Shekhinah are linked by love and create the world and
human beings (male and female) at the archetypal level, while at the human
level, love creates the inner child and, of course, also the
"outer" child. Another
Jewish legend tells how "When Adam got up, his wife was still grown to
him, and the holy soul, which he had, was both his and his wife's. Then God
sawed the man into two parts and completed the wife and brought her complete
and well built to Adam, just how one brings the bride to the
bridegroom". (Bin Gorion, p.66) 3. Sacrifice (Gen.22) Akedah, the Binding of Isaac (See also Dreifuss, 1995) I think it is necessary to start this chapter
with the dramatic text. And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abraham, and said unto him:
“Abraham”, and he said: “Here am I.” And He said: “Take now thy son, thine
only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get into the And Abraham rose early in the morning, and
saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son;
and he cleaved the wood for the burnt-offering, and rose up, and went unto
the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham lifted his
eyes, and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said unto his young men: “Abide
ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go
yonder; and we will worship, and come back to you.” And Abraham took the wood
of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took in his
hand the fire and the knife; and they went both of them together. And Isaac
spoke unto Abraham his father, and said “My father”. And he said: “Here am I,
my son.” And he said: “Behold the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb
for a burnt-offering?” And Abraham said: “God will provide Himself the lamb
for a burnt-offering, my son.” So they went both of them together. And they came to the place, which God had told
him of; and Abraham built the altar there, and laid the wood in order, and
bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. And Abraham
stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the Angel
of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said; “Abraham, Abraham.” And
he said: “Here am I.” And he said: “Lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither do
thou any thing unto him; for now I know that thou art a God-fearing man,
seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thy only son, from Me.” And Abraham
lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in the
thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up
for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. And Abraham called the name of
the place Adonai-jireh (That is, The Lord seeth.), as it is said to this day:
“In the mount where the Lord is seen.” “And the angel of the Lord called unto
Abraham a second time out of heaven, and said: ‘By Myself have I sworn, saith
the Lord, because thou hast done this thing, and has not withheld thy son,
thy only son, that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will
multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon
the sea-shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy
seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast
hearkened to My voice.’ So Abraham returned unto his young men, and they rose
up and went together to Beer-Sheba; and Abraham dwelt in Beer-Sheba. (Translation according to the Soncino Chumash) During my studies at the Jung-Institute in Did it mean a covenant with God, the Self, the inner voice? I had to continue listening to the voice
from within as it revealed itself in dreams and active imagination. After the above-mentioned dream my interest in
the story of Abraham was again given new impetus. For many years, I have
published various articles as well as a book on Abraham, the latter together
with Judith Riemer. My papers dealt mainly with the Binding and a more
general meaning of the archetype of sacrifice. In this chapter, I shall try to relate
emotionally to the Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22). I feel angry that God could demand such a
horrendous deed from Abraham to sacrifice his son, even if it is explained as
a test for Abraham's faith. Was God so uncertain of Abraham’s faith that he
needed this test? Where was his infinite knowledge of Abraham's faith, that he was ready to follow whatever he, God, would
ask of him? Had he not left his father's house as he had asked him to
do? Apparently God's doubt was so
strong that he commanded this cruel test. Although Isaac was not sacrificed in the end,
one can empathize with his agony during the three days voyage to It is obvious that God sent the ram as ransom
for Isaac. Abraham then killed the ram and sacrificed it. The ram symbolizes
God's aggressive, instinctual, unconscious side. God saved Isaac from being
sacrificed, having been witness to Abraham's complete surrender to his
command. God and Abraham, after the Akedah, are no longer the same: both are
transformed. In psychological language, the ego and the Self
are transformed. For Abraham Isaac is of the highest value: he is
like every first born son the surety for the continuation of his seed. We are often asked to give up, to sacrifice;
what is dearest to us, that which is of the highest value. There are two conflicting sides of God: one
demands the sacrifice and the other retracts. It is like God against God! It is without doubt that the sacrifice plays a
central part in the religions. I want to discuss briefly two important myths,
one Jewish, one Christian. It is interesting to compare how both the Jewish and Christian religions deal with the sacrifice of the sons. Abraham is the son of Terah, a human being, while Jesus is the Son of God. God requests the sacrifice of Abraham’s son, but then relents. In the Christian myth, God sacrifices his own son, but then resurrects him in heaven. I am aware that this comparison is somehow superficial, but I want to discuss the archetypal father-son relationship in these two myths and the archetype of sacrifice. One could object that whereas Abraham is a human being, like his father and his son, God is "only" the instigator of the drama. In the Jewish myth the father-son relationship is manifold: God is the father of Abraham, so Abraham is the son, but he is also the father of Isaac, and Isaac is the son. Abraham is so to speak the link between God, the father, and Isaac, the son. Why does God not sacrifice Abraham, but delegates the sacrifice to Isaac, the son? Is Isaac aware that he is to be sacrificed, or is he the unconscious victim of God and Abraham's (aggressive) demand? The Biblical myth is developed in the Jewish legends, whereas the sacrifice of Isaac in Christianity is interpreted as a prefigurative sacrifice of Jesus. In the Jewish myth, there is no sacrifice of the son, of a human being, but instead of an animal, the ram. From my
point of view, the essential difference lies in the fact that the son of God
is sacrificed and killed, while the son of Abraham is spared. In the Christian myth Jesus, the Lamb is
sacrificed, while in the Jewish myth, the lamb (Isaac) is spared and the ram
is sacrificed in his stead. In the Christian myth God sacrifices his son,
the son of Mary and of the Holy Spirit. This is a decisive difference to the
Jewish myth. I am aware that these myths are holy. Believing Jews and Christians negate the psychological approach. But I deal with these myths with a deep wish to build a bridge between Jews and Christians (and Moslems) and at the same time to bring the eternal truths of the scriptures nearer to those who are alienated from the theological approach. Jung's teaching of the archetypes and the experience of many individuals, including myself, of the unconscious and its central archetype, the Self, the God-image, is a way to understand the common base of the religious function in human beings and thus accentuate the common traits of the psyche. For the rational man the symbolic attitude is a way for a relationship to the beyond. One
of the common themes in the two myths is sacrifice or the archetype of
sacrifice. Sometimes one is forced to sacrifice, to give something up, and sometimes one is the sacrificed, the victim. Jung’s
interest in the archetype of sacrifice appears already in his early work
“Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido” (1912) (Transformations and Symbols of
Libido), which was revised and extended to “Symbols of Transformation” (CW
5). In his work “Transformations Symbolism in the Mass” (1942/1954, CW 11)
and especially in the sections “general Remarks on the Sacrifice” (par. 376
ff.) and “The Psychological Meaning of Sacrifice” (par. 381 ff.) Jung
discusses the central significance of Sacrifice in Christianity.
The
Archetype of Sacrifice has two aspects: 1.
The active, aggressive aspect, the victimizer, the Sacrificer, the
persecutor. Collective: The aggressive aspect or cause of natural catastrophes (flood, earthquake etc) can be seen as negative, destructive energy, coming from the same source as positive, constructive energy. This energy pattern can be called "God". Nature and human beings are the victims of this negative, aggressive aspect. On the human (collective) level an aggressive nation can be looked upon as the aggressive, victimizing aspect of the archetype of Sacrifice. Individual: The aggressive aspect of the archetype of sacrifice in individuals is directed towards others or towards themselves, fi. in depression or as self-destructiveness. 2.
The passive aspect, the victim, the sacrificed, the persecuted. Collective:
The victims of natural catastrophes or a nation as victim of an aggressor
having lost a war. Individual:
victims of aggressors, extra- or intro-psychic. But what does sacrifice mean today for you, for me? What is its significance in the development of the individual and of the collective? Or, where am I confronted with similar situations to the one of Abraham/Isaac and Jesus? Awareness of the two aspects of the Archetype (Complex) of Sacrifice leads to assertiveness on the one hand and to acceptance of one's vulnerability and the suffering that goes with it, on the other hand. Abraham and Jesus experience the ambivalence of God, the father, or psychologically another instance in the psyche, different or opposed to the will of the Ego. Accepting the inner voice, ponder it, can either be an act of love or fear. It is out of love when this higher instance is experienced as the highest value of the individual for which one brings the sacrifice. Or it is out of fear: if I don't follow the demand of this higher instance, I shall be punished or even killed. This inner demand can either be destructive or empathic and creative. With other words, there are two opposing energies in the psyche and it’s an open question, which one will supersede in a special situation. Is
the annulment of the son-sacrifice due to Abraham's willingness to sacrifice?
The ritualistic preparation for the sacrifice, the altar to be built, the
wood and the fire for the burnt offering, the emotional tension of Abraham
created a situation in which, synchronistical, the ram appears as replacement
for Isaac. And so, father and son are saved: the father had not to sacrifice,
kill, the son, and the son was not killed. God is transformed,
psychologically the Ego is not overcome by the aggression of the Self. Time and again we are forced to sacrifice. A good example is the withdrawal or sacrifice of projections. Instead of blaming always "the other", of seeing in him the adversary, one has to ask oneself, where am I to be blamed for what happens. This is an act of becoming aware of one's own aggressive side, of one's shadow-a new consciousness. In
Biblical times there were the sacrifices of animals in the temple. But there
is a tendency against animal sacrifices, to substitute them by ethical
behavior. A good example is Hosea 6,6: "For I
desire kindness and not sacrifice". This is also the Christian attitude.
From this point of view the wish to reinstall the animal sacrifices in the
temple is clearly a regression, because it is taken literally, and not
symbolically. Life
is sacrificial: what does this mean? We have received life as a loan from
God, it is not really ours, it does not belong to the ego, but to the self.
Usually sacrificing or giving is contaminated with ego-demands: I give in
order to get! But real sacrifice is without demands of the ego. I give
because I feel compelled to give, no demands. No
one can sacrifice an ego claim unless he is aware of it. The aware ego
sacrifices to a power greater than it. This means that God, here the Self, is
an overpowering factor. It
is most difficult to understand comprehensively the sacrifice, or the
archetype of sacrifice. What did people in all religions force to bring
sacrifices to a higher being? Fear and the belief that without sacrifice
there will be no more growth, the earth will not give fruit or the sun will
not rise anymore. The sacrifice must be of value, even of the highest value.
According to the period it can be animals, fruit or money. In the blood of
the sacrificed animals lies a power, “ mana”. This
power transfers itself to the Sacrificer. There exists a “participation
mystique” between the Sacrificer and the sacrificed. The
act of offering, of sacrificing, is a symbolic act by which one hopes to
achieve a transformation. By
sacrificing, one hopes to get to a harmony with nature or with God. In order to relate to the transcendence, one has
to sacrifice the belief that by intellectual knowledge alone one can relate
to something other than the ego. With other words, humbleness opens the
possibility to accept the Self as a higher instance than the ego. Intellect
alone does not bring a feeling of wholeness, and a naive belief does not lead
to the individuation process. Here
are some dreams containing symbols of wholeness and of the spirit: A
woman with a negative father complex dreamt that she was travelling (by
train) to The
elderly cantor symbolized for her a father figure that gave her the warmth
and affection she longed for, but had not received from her biological
father. It connected her with her Jewish roots. The
journey to A
woman in her thirties, who was living a life in conflict with her true nature
and instincts, dreamt: "The Shofar was blown, and its ancient sound cast
a spell over me. My heart said: even today the ram's horn is still
blown." (See Dreifuss, 1973) The
dreamer is moved by the sound of the Shofar and overpowered by her
irrational, unconscious being. When the Shofar is blown in the synagogue, God
is present in time and space. It is a numinous, mystical experience. But the
dream also contains the motive of atonement. By blowing the horn and by
praying, the believers hope to move God to absolve them on the Day of
Judgement. And God, so to speak, renounces his destructive side and forgives.
The dream gave her a feeling of a new beginning, a rebirth. A
woman, 50 year old dreamt: "I went up to the flat stone roof of a
building in the old city of This
is the dream of a rational woman who was gradually confronted with the
irrational in her individuation process. the dreamer was
born and raised in As
mentioned before, A
woman analysand, 60 years old, in the course of her inner development,
arrived at a point, in which a relationship to the being, to the
"numen", to the Self became vital. Her husband had died several
years earlier and two years after his death she came for analysis. After
one and a half years of intensive analysis she had the following numinous
dream: "I see a green wave, not of water, coming from the right side on
which is written in Hebrew: "I am that I am" (ehyeh asher ehyeh,
Exodus 3:14). She was deeply moved by this dream, which was a numinous
experience helping her to feel the transpersonal roots of her soul. The
eternal spirit was to be found in the depth of her soul. The wave was firm,
coming from the right. The green color points to natural growth. From another
point of view this dream can be explained as a mystical experience: The Ego
melts or fuses into eternity, or the Ego and the Self are one for a moment.
As this patient was firmly rooted in outer reality, there was no danger of
being swept over by the wave. Jewish
symbols in dreams are an expression of man's deep need to return to his roots
and to rediscover. To
end this chapter I want to stress the fact that the behavior of Abraham is
clearly against all reason. Just because of this, Abraham became the
prototype of man who obeys the godly command in spite of all reason. 4. Jealousy (Gen. 25ff) The
Hostile Brothers The motive of the "hostile brothers"
which is found in all mythologies and fairy-tales points to the fact that
hostility is built into the human soul. There are many reasons for brotherly
hostility: One brother can feel that injustice has been done to him and he
has to fight for justice. God preferred the sacrifice of Abel to the one of
Cain. In his fight for justice, brotherly love is put aside! Justice, a cold
principle, is dominant over love, over feeling for a brother. It is also the
outward expression of his inner suffering: Cain lacks the psychic strength to
bear the reproach and the injustice and to overcome them. The motive of the hostile brothers can also be
looked upon as a struggle between two opposite aspects of the psyche, between
justice and love, or between hate and love. Here is a clinical example: a man of about 50
had no contact with his 12 years younger brother for many years. When he came
to analysis, he blamed his mother that she had preferred this younger brother
to him and in consequence broke off his relationship to his mother. Yet he
had guilt feelings for not being in contact with her. In the course of
analysis he was confronted with his exaggerated wish for justice. As I am
writing these lines he was again in contact with his mother, but not yet with
his brother. Hostility next to other emotions accompanies the
child from the beginning of his life. The open and bold expression, which is
generally known, is the hostile feeling towards the younger brother born into
the family. The older brother feels threatened by a new and different reality
where the attention is no longer focused on him. He has to share with another
the satisfaction of the basic needs for life-warmth, love and food. The
imagined threat to his life and to his existence brings about primary hostile
feelings. The weaning of the first born from the breast of his mother-the
place of security, protection, loves and food-is a traumatic event. The
feelings of envy, apprehension and anxiety are aroused because of this deprivation
and are projected to the brother or after processes of distortion are
projected unto the mother who as if removes him from the origin of his
vitality. The problem of weaning exists almost at every age, even if there is
no actual brother who takes the place of the weaned one. We shall not discuss
the competition, which exists between the brothers for the love of the
parents, and the striving for success as a result of this situation, nor the distortion, which are caused by the lack of
treatment of the childhood-trauma at the proper time. In spite of this, in
some way, by adaptation, conscious or unconscious integration, in general a
way is found to live one next to the other, even with solidarity, and without
extreme expression of aggression which comes from the envy of the brother or
brothers and the apprehension from them. In most cases, family and social
surroundings prevent aggressive expressions of feelings, but hostile
feelings, which are repressed, are close to the surface and may come out when
the circumstances motivate it. They are often turned inward, i.e. against the
person himself, causing depression. The story of Cain and Abel deals with
fratricide. It is interesting to note that the first motive, which develops
after the expulsion from paradise, does not occupy itself with man's
adaptation to a life outside the protecting surroundings of paradise. It does
not deal with the story of a family of which is demanded an endeavor to
acquire faculties necessary for existence, but with murder of a man, of a
brother, because of God's preference of one over the other. In this and other
stories that appear in the Bible, God fulfills the function of the father.
The preference by God for the younger brother brings forth the envy and the
jealousy that is hidden under the surface in the heart of the elder
brother-Cain on the younger one-Abel. It is difficult to avoid the feeling that the
real culprit for the murder is God who chooses the sacrifice according to his
liking! Cain is the first man in the Bible to bring an
offering, a sacrifice to God. He fulfills the basic human need to relate by a
sacrifice to God, to the transcendence. He took from the fruit of his work,
from his possession, and offered it to God. I cannot accept the explanation
of Rashi that Cain's offering was inferior because he took from the fruit of
the Could it be that God prefers the smell of burnt
meat to the smell of burnt crop? But we don't deal with the offering, but
with God who prefers one sacrifice to another, with a God who caused by his
rejection of Cain that the first human crime and murder of man-brother would
be performed. God even augmented the feeling of rejection and inferiority of
Cain by telling him: (4,7) "If thou doest well,
shall it not be lifted up? And if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the
door; and unto thee is its after the murder God
says: What have you done? The balance of the moral and the desire, but thou
mayest rule over it". What is the meaning of this? Is this not a rude
provocation to the genuine reaction of Cain to God's denial of his sacrifice-
"and his countenance fell" (4,5). The so to speak all-knowing God provokes Cain
although he should have been aware of his incapacity to bear pain. What could
God gain by the murder of Abel and the humiliation of Cain? Was he changed? What was the purpose of stirring these feelings
of murderous aggression? Is God or Cain to be blamed for the conflict that in
the end causes the murder? Should Cain's feeling of aggression go so far as
to end in murder? The answer from a religious point of view is a definite
"no". There is also the question if the almighty God did not know
that by preferring one of the brothers an act of murder would be caused, an
act that would loosen negative energy because of the fact that the brothers
in any case envy each other. Our concept of the divine is different and
ambivalent. We don't wish to deal with the metaphysical aspect of the
divinity but with the God-image that is a composite of the all-encompassing
needs of mankind. Let's come back to the analysis of the story
with regard to envy and murder. When Cain is the protagonist of the story,
Abel is his shadow, the unconscious side of his personality; when Abel is the
protagonist, Cain is his shadow. Cain is not able to carry the conflict in his
soul, to deal with his jealousy other than by killing his brother. He is
acting out his shadow in a most aggressive way-murder! Psychologically
speaking he would have had to carry the conflict, to become aware of his
aggressive shadow, to express it. There are many ways to react to rejection. One
is passive in which the rejected accepts the rejection and may also reject
him. The active reaction is expressing the anger (shadow) in different ways.
Cain did not reject God, but instead murdered the brother who was preferred
by God! By doing this, consciously or unconsciously, he "solved"
his conflict, his jealousy. He was so overcome by his jealousy that he did
not look for a solution other than murder. His anger was directed to the
brother, not towards God who was the cause of his jealousy. The brothers of
Joseph acted differently: They did not kill their brother Joseph, but
"only" threw him to a pit! But they could have found other ways to
deal with Joseph's hubris! Cain fell victim to his
own uncontrolled aggression. His destructive shadow overpowered him. He did
not have the inner strength to deal with God's rejection. He did not, unlike
Job, enter into a confrontation with the unjust God. By killing his brother,
Cain became so to speak the victim of his own aggressive side. In other words he wasn't a "good
loser"! The murder of his brother brought a momentary release of his
anger, but did not bring any solution to Cain's feeling of being rejected. On
the contrary, the murdered brother would accompany him always in the form of
the sign brought upon him by God. He will be "a fugitive and wanderer on
the earth". In other words, he is punished for his murder, for his sin.
Here again we have an example of God's injustice. He first causes Cain to sin
and then punishes him for sinning. Is God conscious of his injustice? The sign on Cain's forehead was planted in order
to protect him from his persecutors. The memory of his deed is his
persecutor! It may be interesting to mention that our
interpretation of Cain and Abel as symbolizing one human entity can be
explained by the Jungian approach that the human psyche consists of different
parts, complexes or sub-personalities. I want to add a few remarks about another story
of hostile brothers: Comparing the two stories, Cain and Abel and
Jacob and Esau, it springs to mind that in the latter there is no murder. The
hostility shows itself in Jacob leaving the scene, coming back many years
later, meeting Esau, being afraid, but there is no aggression, but
reconciliation. I want to ask another question: is God directly
involved in both stories? Yes and No. Yes in as much as he reveals to Rebecca
that two nations are in her womb and one will be stronger than the other
will. The difference of the two brothers in projected into the future, into
history, buy it must be interpreted also on a personal level, as the text
really does. But God is further involved into the plot because he is behind
Rebecca's successful plan for Isaac to receive the blessing of the firstborn
from father Isaac and instead of Jacob. One can also see the motive of the hostile
brothers in sibling rivalry as I pointed out above with a clinical example. One aspect of the problem between Jacob and Esau
lies in the fact that they are different personality types. Jacob,
"dwelling in tents", is an introvert, while Esau, "a cunning
hunter" is an extravert. This difference in types is a source of conflict
in all close relationships. For the introvert, the encounter with the outer
world is difficult and often frightening. Jacob is afraid of a confrontation
with Esau, partly because he senses the extraverted brother as hostile, but
also because potentially Esau is a real danger for his life. Serving Laban
for so many years shows again his fear of confrontation with the world
outside, personified in Laban. At the end he solves his problem with Laban by
running away secretly. Escape is probably the only way at this stage of
development. It is interesting to note that Jacob, about to
encounter Esau, gets into a strong conflict and is full of fear. Jacob projected his inferior extraverted side
unto Esau: he has not yet internalized it. Jacob may also suffer from guilt
feelings because of the fraud around the benediction. So his fear of Esau is
also the fear of his own inferior side, of his shadow, of his inner brother. For Jacob, who during decades spent his life
with the vision of Beth-El (the house of God, Gen. 28, Jacob's dream), the
Esau problem must have grown beyond being only a family problem. The central happening that Jacob experienced in
this situation, is the fight with the angel. Before and even during the fight
Jacob by no means knows with whom he is fighting, which becomes clear by the
question "who is `He'". Contrary to this is the naming of the place
with Pni-El and the later remark to Esau, which proves, that the fighter was
`God' in the figure of Esau. The angel, according to old tradition, is the
representative of Esau, is the representative of the “Esau-parts” in Jacob
and the representative of the hostile other world, of the opposite. With the event, however, the problem of the
opposites of the two worlds is overcome. Esau, as an aspect of God, is the
broader concept in which Jacob overcomes the world of the introvert, which is
only one half of the world. Thus he also recognizes the ‘other side’, the
world outside and evil as a face of God. With this experience he accepted his
own "Esau shadow" and assimilated it into his consciousness,
recognizing it as godly. At the same time he recognizes evil as a messenger
of God and the seemingly hostile and negative world outside (the fight with
the angel) as a face of the Godhead. The angel who represents an aggressive side of
the unconscious, of the Self, attacks Jacob. In this fight, Jacob, who so far
repressed his shadow or projected it unto Esau, experiences now the power of
the shadow but does not succumb to it. He thus realizes his own aggressive
side and integrates it. Thus his God-image changes. He is now aware of the
dark side of God, of the Self. His God-image of a good God changes to a
God-image containing good and evil. The opposites are now united in the Self,
in God. Only this experience in the fight enabled him to
experience the duality of God, inside and outside, and in Good and Evil, in
Jacob and Esau. Jacob could now integrate Esau, his other side, his shadow:
the split was abolished. This is an experience in his individuation-process. Through this experience, Jacob grew out of his
world-fearing attitude. Something extremely meaningful happened, something,
which has a decisive and obvious impact for Jacob. The assimilation, the
making conscious and the acceptance of the other side as belonging to the
substance of the world and of God, shows itself at once in his encounter with
Esau. The way in which he avoids continuing the
journey with Esau is also `cunning', but it is no longer a malicious maneuver
of fraud, an unconscious inferior function, but a conscious way of dealing
with man, a successful adaptation to a reality fully understood and
comprehended. Esau is a factor to be dealt with, no demon and fear evoking
monster, but a man being of a different structure. Through the touching of his loin by the angel,
Jacob limps. This negative outcome of the fight remains as a sign of a
physical infirmity throughout his life. Limping is archetypal, because in mythology
certain heroes have this defect, i.e. the smith Hephaistos. It shows
psychologically, that the hero has no “normal” life, that he is different and
that he is marked by his task. The touching of the realm of the loin is
apparently connected with a touching of the sexual sphere (cf. Gen. 46:26,
where posterity comes from the "loin"). By the conscious acknowledgment
of the double principle of nature and spirit, the negative penetrating force
of the shadow weakened. One can feel this in the humility of his behavior
towards Esau. The change of Jacob's name to The basic experience of Jacob in the fight with
the angel, a decisive personal experience of his existence, has anticipated a
solution of a problem, which especially today has become significant as a
collective problem, namely peace between the nations, the religions and the
people. 5. Suffering (Job) At
the end of April 1997 I dreamt the following dream: “I wish to take some
lessons with a teacher on the book of Job…” I
asked myself if this is a demand from within that I have to occupy myself
with “Job” again? I remember how in 1952 I was gripped by Jung’s book “Answer
to Job” when it had just appeared. A
heated discussion took place in In
his “Answer to Job” Jung shows the historical evolution since the time of
Job, through the centuries, in the Christian world. He discusses the
assumption of Mary and sees in it an elevation of the feminine principle:
Mary in heaven next to God. Jung saw two sides of God in the book of Job: in
his suffering by God Job expects help from God against God. Job says (19:25);
“…I know that my redeemer liveth”. God inflicts the suffering, but he also
redeems! To say this simply: there is a good God and a bad God. Where does
Evil come from? The
elevation of the feminine and the union of male and female principles is found in the
Kabbalah, where the union of opposites is expressed in the tree of the
Sephiroth. The ten Sephiroth are aspects of the
godhead, but are a unity. With other words, the God-image of the Kabbalah is
paradoxical: ten are one. The opposites, the male and female energies, are
formulated. An example is the masculine Sephirah of justice opposite the
feminine Sephirah of compassion. The feminine principle as incorporated in
the Shekhinah will be discussed below in the chapter of the Song of Songs. In
my work as a therapist I was confronted with the suffering of people and I
often took Job’s experience with his friends who did not understand him and
had no compassion for him as an example of man’s suffering which cannot be
explained rationally. Job’s friends represent a collective attitude in which
there is a causal relationship between sin and suffering: Man suffers because
he sinned. Job could not accept this and he asked more intensively for the
cause of his fate. He felt that the amount of his suffering was in no
comparison with his sin. He forced God into a dialogue and reasoned with him.
Psychologically this is an inner dialogue with his fate, an attempt to
understand it. Thus Job is saved from deep depression because in a seemingly
hopeless situation he breaks through into the realm of the spirit. He now
looks for a more genuine understanding of his fate than he had in his happy
days. Who is this God? Is He there, high up in heaven or else in the soul of
every human being? When we say “God”, we express an image or concept, which
in the course of time undergoes many transformations. We cannot know the
ineffable, the inexpressible, but we can get a notion of it. As
therapist of victims of the Holocaust I had to grapple with Evil. The victims
often asked me: “Why did this happen to me, or happen at all”? Take as an
example a woman survivor who had lost her husband and two children. Could I
talk to her of meaning of her suffering? Definitely not! As a therapist I
felt that I had to be with the
suffering patient, but also to observe the dreams which helped her by
accentuating the here and now. In such a dream she experienced “life and love”,
as she described her feelings. This was an emotional help from within. In
these cases all explanations like being humble or to be confronted with one’s
own deficiencies are shallow. In these therapies with Holocaust-victims I was
confronted with the prevailing attitude of a good God. No, he was not only
good, but also bad. I found that the ambivalent God image was the answer for
many people as for myself. What happened to people
was good or bad luck. The victim of the Holocaust has a hard, incomprehensible
fate. Whatever good things may happen to him after Here it seems important again to quote Jung (CW
5, par. 89): "The Book of Job shows us God at work both
as a creator and destroyer. Who is this God? An idea that has forced itself
upon mankind in all parts of the earth and in all ages and always in similar
form: an otherworldly power which has us at its mercy, which begets and
kills-an image of all the necessities and inevitableness of life. Since,
psychologically speaking, the God-image is a complex of ideas of an
archetypal nature, it must necessarily be regarded
as representing a certain sum of energy (libido) which appears in projection.
In most of the existing religions it seems that the formative factor which
creates the attributes of divinity is the father-imago, while in the older
religions it was the mother-imago...The God-concept is not only an image, but
an elemental force. The primitive power which Job's Hymn of Creation
vindicates, absolute and inexorable, unjust and superhuman, is a genuine and
authentic attribute of the natural power of instinct and fate...Nothing
remains for mankind but to work in harmony with this will. To work in harmony
with the libido does not mean letting oneself drift with it, for the psychic
forces have no uniform direction, but are often directly opposed to one
another. A mere letting go of one leads in the shortest space of time to the
most hopeless confusion.... At any rate collisions, conflicts, and mistakes
are scarcely avoidable." Jung further relates to the Book of Job and its
place in Judaism. In Aion, (CW 9,II, par. 105 ff.) he writes: "... the problem of the Yahwistic
God-image, which had been constellated in men's mind ever since the Book of
Job, continued to be discussed in Gnostic circles and in syncretistic Judaism
generally...the unanimous decision in favor of God's goodness did not satisfy
the conservative Jews." After quoting a number of passages from Hebrew
literature (par. 106-110), Jung continues (par. 111) that "It is not difficult to see from these
quotations what was the effect of Job's contradictory
God-image. It became a subject for religious speculation inside
Judaism...." And
what would have happened if Job had listened to his wife who said impulsively
“blaspheme God, and die” (2:9-10)? The encounter between Job and God would
not have taken place! God would not
have revealed himself and Job would not have been transformed. It is
interesting to discuss the reaction of Job’s wife to his suffering. She asks
if he still holds fast to his integrity, to his piety. She sees no meaning in
his suffering. She does not relate with feeling to her suffering husband. She
reacts with her masculine side, her negative animus. But Job answers that one
has to receive good and evil at the hand of God. He accepts the antinomy of
God. He is not yet revolting against God.
Satan,
the accuser, has instigated God to inflict the suffering on Job and had said
that Job would blaspheme him, if God would take from him all that he had.
(1:9-12) Job’s wife was clearly on the side of Satan, of evil. This is not
astonishing in a patriarchal religion where the good God is masculine. The
woman is then clearly connected with evil. Who
is Satan, the accuser, in this story?
Psychologically he is a side of God, but autonomous. He is strong,
“seducing” God, who succumbs to his demand. Why did God not say to Satan that
he knows Job’s devotion and piety and that there is no need to test him?
Where was his omniscience? Job really did not sin and did not deserve the
punishment and suffering. In
the encounter with Job, God demonstrates his power and shows no empathy for
Job’s suffering. For
me, the main point in the book of Job is an individual’s experience of the
antinomy of God, of his inner opposites. God’s punishment of Job is cruel and
unjust. God is a creator and a destroyer, as Isaiah (45:7) so clearly states: ”I
form the light, and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I am the
Lord that does all these things.” This
deep insight of Isaiah has not penetrated the prevailing collective image of
a good God. Job
had been like his friends, but his bitter experience compelled him to search
for a more adequate attitude, for a spiritual support. Job
is finally forced to acknowledge his ignorance. By realizing the infinite
mysteries of nature, the grandeur of the sky and earth, he bows his head in
humble acknowledgment of his human insignificance against the cosmic majesty. Job,
in his suffering, turns to the righteous side of God, to his redeemer
(19:25). The
genius of the book lets Job enter into reflection by imposing the question of
meaning. Everything becomes quiet when man enters into reflection of his
fate. It is of fine psychological consequence that after having answered his
friends and his heartless wife, Job does not utter a word for seven days and
seven nights. Thus he apparently gathered strength for his encounter with the
superior God. The
solution of the drama between God and Job lies in the fact that in their
dialogue both are transformed. But is it really a dialogue, when God
demonstrates his superior power over man, without compassion? Man stands
opposite God. Tiamat, Rahab and Leviathan are monsters of the sea. God
describes with them his own unfathomable natural side, his own dark side. God
must become aware of his own natural, instinctive and aggressive side. At the
end, Job understands God. Before his emotional encounter with God, his God
image, his belief, consisted of what he heard. Now he experienced God in his
dark side. Job’s direct emotional encounter and experience of God puts him on
another level. According to Jung, Job does not yet see the opposites in
himself, but only in God. With other words, he projects the opposites. But on
Job’s level, nothing else is as yet possible. Job is the victim of God, but
at the same time the bearer of the godly fate. The
meaning of man’s life is lastly a taking part in the godly drama. According
to the teaching of the Kabbalah man has to help to improve the creation
(Tikun). God is inhuman. His emotionality is an expression of his not
integrated positive feminine side. Job, a mortal, is, without knowing and
without wishing it, elated above the stars, from where he even sees the back
part of Yahweh. To
sum up one could say that the book of Job is a unique spiritual epic, a
supreme drama of the human soul. It portraits the loneliness of the
individual in his suffering. It shows Job’s fortitude in rejecting the advice
of his friends and that of his wife, challenging God. In the dispute with his
friends Job, the individual stands opposite the collective. There is no
causal relation between sin and suffering. Man searches in vain for justice.
Job’s suffering I not just. Justice is relative, varies in different
societies, where fi. Vendetta is just. The injustice in this world furthered
the belief of justice in the world to come that is after death. The opposites
or contradictions are within the Godhead. This is God’s antinomy. After
experiencing the negative side of God, Job turns to his positive side. The
opposites of justices and love become obvious in the book. Job is finally
forced to acknowledge his ignorance. By being conscious of the infinite
mysteries of nature, of the grandeur of the sky and the earth, he bows his
head in humble acknowledgment of his human insignificance against the cosmic
majesty. 6. Ecclesiastes When my mother-in-law reached the “Golden Age”
she would often repeat the following verses of Ecclesiastes: “All is vanity” and “there is nothing new under
the sun”. This led me to ponder again on the scroll of
Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is one of the five Scrolls
(Megilloth, 1946), included in the Scriptures, together with the Song of
Songs, Ruth, Lamentations and Esther. According to tradition it is ascribed
to King Solomon. The meaning of the name "Koheleth" is not clear:
is it a proper name or not? Koheleth in the Greek translation of the Bible is
called "Ecclesiastes", the preacher. In contradistinction to other biblical stories
like fi Jonah and Samson, which contain mythological motives, Koheleth deals
with conscious deliberations on life in general or on his life. It is rather
philosophical, not mythological. The themes Koheleth deals with come up often
in psychotherapeutic sessions or are discussed between people asking
themselves about the meaning of their lives, of life in general, especially
in the second half of life. I wish to discuss some central themes of the
book. I use the subtitles of the ‘Zurich Bible’, in order to arrange the
text. This is necessary, because the Biblical text is not ordered
systematically. 1. The unvarying monotony in the cycle of
things, 1:1-11 The main points in this section are “vanity of
vanities” and “there is nothing new under the sun”. These words express a
feeling of meaninglessness in life; they reveal a nihilistic attitude. The
atmosphere is rather gloomy. Everything existed already and continues to
exist. This is amplified by examples from nature, by the eternal cycles in
nature, the eternal orbit of the stars. It culminates in the well-known
verse: “And there is nothing new under the sun”. I have experienced these feelings especially at
the age of 20. It was in 1941. I lived in Often Koheleth is looked upon as being full of
contradictions. From a purely rational point of view, this is really so. Yet,
from a deeper level, these contradictions express a reality beyond a
one-sided attitude. Psychologically speaking the opposite is in the
unconscious. The opposite of vanity is worth, meaning, fullness, and
significance. Making the opposites conscious widens the outlook. There is no
more either-or, but either and or. Vanity and meaning are
a pair of opposites. This is important in psychotherapy: There is always an
opposite in the unconscious, which has to be made conscious. Life seems to be
meaningless at times and full of meaning at other times. “Vanity of Vanities” expresses the lack of
significance in life. The Hebrew word for vanity is “hevel”, which means
breath, breeze and whiff. It has a spiritual connotation. “And there is nothing new under the sun”. Everything has existed already and
continuous to exist. Koheleth amplifies this by examples from nature: the
eternal cycles, like night and day, the four seasons, the eternal orbit of
the stars. Nature represents the feminine principle or archetype. It is
unhistorical, recurrent, and eternal, beyond time. The corresponding
masculine principle or energy is historic, in time. Koheleth relates to the cyclic aspect of existence
and sees only the negative side. In a less gloomy mood, he could have felt
the positive side, that the cycles bestow the feeling of eternity, of
immortality of the soul. Opposite the cyclic notion is the linear view of
time. It teaches us that there is a constant
transformation going on in the world. What once was valid will not be valid
for all times. There is a change going on. Here Koheleth contradicts what he
said before, namely that everything is vain. From a Jungian point of view
contradictions are different aspects; both can be true. It is not either/or,
but either and or. Koheleth states that there is nothing new in
God’s creation. This is true and not true! It is true that the sun shines
millions of years and nature renews itself annually. Yet man has remained the
same in thousands of years: jealousy, power-drive, and falsehood on the
negative side, compassion, love and caring for others on the positive side.
(I don’t deal here with innovations of technology, the advance of science and
important sociological changes, but with psychological truths.) One of the
changes is Jung’s stress on the search for meaning in our time. He describes
the individuation process, an attempt to find meaning in one’s personal life
by experiencing the reality of the soul. 2. Striving after wisdom as well as after
sensual pleasure is vain
1:12-18; 2:all Koheleth gives a moving biography of himself. He
strives to a bit of happiness, to a moment of good luck. Yet he comes to the
painful insight that we cannot know anything, that the eternal question of
the essence of things brings us to the realization that we know nothing.
Therefore the stupid one with his illusions, the one who lives his life
without philosophic questions is happier than the wise man that battles with
the questions of the meaning of life. Then follows his desperate attempt to
give meaning to his life by simple pleasures. But this fails because the soul
turns away with disgust from the craziness of a limitless pleasure of life.
He wants to give content to his life by grandiose creations. While planning
and building he is relatively happy, but when everything has been achieved,
he again falls into a void: everything is vanity. Striving for something is
meaningful as long as it is not yet attained. This experience, this
realization is bitter and brings the wise man to destructive thoughts and
sorrows with regard to the future: what will happen to all his creations when
he shall not be in the world anymore? These thoughts bring him to resignation
and hatred of life. 3. To every thing there is a season (Chapter
3: 1-8) Koheleth talks about a time to be born and a
time to die; a time for crying and a time for laughing aso. I understand this
as meaning that changes and decisions have to be made at the right time. This
is a correct psychological insight. One needs patience and awareness.
Impulsive action often brings disaster. 4. The misery of human existence (Chapter
3:9-22) In these verses Koheleth deals with different
life-experiences. There is no morality and much suffering comes upon men
because there is much injustice in the courts of justice. Envy and jealousy
are motives of men’s doing. We see the stupidity of the egoists who are
concerned only with them. We also see how the mood of the masses is
changeable, the masses that cheer or hail at times this one, and at other
times another one. We see the frivolity in religious matters, in prayers and
vows. We see the misuse of power and might. We experience the futility, even
corruptibility and destructiveness of possession and richness. The balance of
human life cannot be that he is happy. The more we demand from life things
that we don’t need, the more the danger of missed life grows. This is the big
fraud of a purely materialistic approach to life, which can lead to a lack of
meaning. 5. Oppression and solitude (Chapter 4:1-16) Koheleth reveals his empathic side when talking
about oppression. He sees the tears of the oppressed. He accuses people of
jealousy and ponders on injustice. He sees the perils of solitude, because
only in twosome mutual help and support is possible. 6. Awe before God (4:17 and 5;1-8) One should relate to God in awe and listen to
his words. This is better than sacrifices given by fools. Koheleth takes a
stand against sacrifices, which were brought in the temple. To listen to the
words of God is preferable and wise. But did not God also command the
sacrifices? I agree with the prophet Isaiah that circumcising the heart is
better than circumcising the penis. (See below on circumcision.) The
following dream of a twenty-nine-year-old male patient contains the
circumcision as a symbol: "A
certain Mrs. X performs a second circumcision on me, and also circumcises my
wife." This
dream was an archetypal experience that caused the dreamer to understand his
Jewish background from a Jungian symbolic point of view. This dream provides
a good example of how the collective symbol of circumcision and sacrifice
acquired a personal meaning for the dreamer and influenced him to clarify
further their meaning. 7. Vanity of wealth (5:9-19; 6:1-11; 7:1) Loving money is vain. Naked one is born, and
naked one dies. So what is the profit of one’s labor? Yet, to eat, to drink
and to enjoy is one’s profit. If some body has richness, God given, but
cannot enjoy it, this is also vain. The essence of this is found in verse
7:1: “A good name is better than
precious oil; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth”. 8. Seriousness and composure (7:2-15) Koheleth proposes middle way between being too
righteous and too wise. And one should not be too foolish, or too wicked. He
turns against extremism. Only by awareness of one’s doing can one find a
middle way between the opposites. His experience with women seems to have
been only negative. He finds bitterer than death the vicious woman. One is
reminded of Samson’s experience with Delilah. One should be on guard from the
woman! All to often a woman brought a man to the
abyss. Koheleth relates here to the fact that man can be possessed when he has
fallen in love. The same goes for a woman who fell in love. This passage
should not be understood as a negative attitude towards women, but as a
warning of being overpowered by desire and sexuality. Is the attitude of Koheleth to women an outcome
of his life’s experience? Had he never a positive, lasting experience with a
woman? Was he married? The main point in this chapter is the idea that
death is the teacher of life. It stresses the great value of life, of each
hour, of each moment, apparently because of the thought of death. The
certainty of death pushes so to speak back into life. Man’s life and the
thought of death must determine us to do our life task with full power.
Therefore Koheleth warns us from all eccentricity or extravagance. He also states
that religious ideal leads when exaggerated to insanity. A healthy egoism is
a necessity of life. He warns not to be oversensitive towards the judgment of
the world. One has to be aware that who is dependent of you may at times
curse you. The essence of the attitude of Koheleth seems to be verse 29: “God
made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.” (“Inventions are
those endeavors of man which alienate him from the true meaning of life, from
relating to the transcendental roots of his soul.”) Koheleth proposes a
simple life, void of extravagances. 9. Wise moderation (7:16-30) After warning of extremes like too much piety
and ungodliness, Koheleth states (Verse 24) “that which is, is far off, and
exceeding deep; who can find it out?” I see in these words a deep religious
statement. In humility one cannot know the origins of things, of life. 10. Behavior opposite the ruler (8:1-8) Koheleth gives advise how to behave opposite a
ruler, the king. The wise man knows the power of the ruler and therefore
recommends keeping the law. 11. Same fate for the righteous as for the
wicked (8:9-17) The main content of this section is verse 14,
which I want to quote in full: “There is vanity, which is done upon the earth:
that there are righteous men, unto whom it happens according to the work of
the wicked; again, there are wicked men, to whom it happens according to the
work of the righteous-I said that this is also vanity.” In short: Koheleth sees no justice in this
world. The punishment of the wicked will be in the world to come. They will
not be in heaven, but in hell. This is of course the traditional approach to
sin! 12. All kinds of wisdom (9:1-18; 10:1-20) Koheleth repeats what he said in the section
above. There is only one fate for all, for the righteous and the sinner. Yet,
as long as one lives, there is hope for something. One should enjoy life. He
thinks it is a good thing that one does not know when disaster comes upon us.
One does not know the time of one’s death. 13. Rules of prudence (11:1-8) Again, Koheleth shows his humbleness. One does
not know one’s fate. On the one hand one can change one’s fate,
on the other hand one cannot change it. This is the paradox of life. Gaining
more awareness by taking the unconscious into consideration, as described by
Jung in the individuation process, is a Jungian “solution”. It is the
relationship to the Self. 14. Youth and age (11:9-10; 12:1-14) Koheleth recommends enjoying one’s youth, as one
does not know what the future brings. As if to excuse himself for the bitter words he
had said, the wise man adds an epilogue. Was it not hard that that he tore us
away from illusions, that he destroyed our dream to be king? The pen brought
him to say, almost against his will, such bitter truth. Just as the words of
the wise man don’t flatter our inclinations, but like the prick leads the
obstinate animal to the right way, so he frees us from all errors and wrong
ways. All this bitter wisdom helps us to experience
the full luminosity of life. The thought of God and the responsibility
towards life are the only value, which can give meaning to man’s fleeting
existence. Summary: Considering the total content of the book, one
can see two parts: the part with a more negative content, Chapter 1-6, and
the more positive part, Chapter 7 till the end. The first part talks more to those secure in
their life, those who have no cognizance yet of the changes that take place
in life, psychologically they are relatively unaware. They overvalue
themselves and their achievements in face of a friendly present, full of
sunshine. The second part turns to those of little courage
or those who are faint-hearted and to those who are in despair. They want to
talk themselves into the comfortable philosophy that man anyway is only a
dust particle, a passing nothing. Therefore they negate every achievement,
which could give menacing to the moment. They are neurotic. Koheleth did not
create meaning for his life. When he had money, he did not use it properly.
He did not learn or build a family. One has to immortalize the moment; life has to
be connected with eternity, with the transcendence; this is a paradox one has
to accept. In dreams or in paintings, fi of a mandala there is a numinous
notion of the transcendence. For Koheleth death is a decisive fact in human
life. One should always be aware of one’s frailty and consider the end. In
the face of death difficulties in life get the correct weight. Koheleth is a
book of wisdom. The book shows warm empathy with the suffering of the world.
It is full of love, because it wants to lead those who are poor in love, to
love. It opens the door of hope to those who cannot hope. The bitter truth
can comfort those who are unhappy, because it expresses their own sorrow. Koheleth speaks to the soul. It offers bitter
medicine as it shows our limits. It is very human. It is a book of timeless
value. Kohelet deals with the following subjects: Resignation, melancholy, wisdom, skepticism,
fatalism, nihilism, common sense, inconsistency, challenging the belief in
God, individual and collective, vanity (lack of meaning) and meaning, to
enjoy and to suffer, possession and poverty, death and birth, death for all,
time and eternity, justice and injustice, togetherness and aloneness, richness
and poverty, righteousness and wickedness, individual and collective. Preaching is the proclamation of a divine
message. The preacher is one who believes himself to be the ambassador of
God, charged with a message, which is his duty to deliver. And so are the
prophets who heard the command of God to bring to the public the message of
God. Here follows my imaginary talk with the
preacher. He is an old man looking back at his life and at life in general.
He is alone as no other human beings are mentioned. He is in a pessimistic,
gloomy and melancholic mood. There is no meaning in his life, no sense, in
whatever he does. Nothing new has been created and nothing has been changed
in the world, everything is predictable and repeats itself: "That which
hath been is that which shall be" (1,9). He has
lived his life and when he dies, he will be forgotten, as if he had not
lived. The result of his soul searching is very pessimistic. He is bitter.
Koheleth, the old man, has not come to grips with his life, with his fate. I shall relate to Koheleth from a psychological
point of view. I use the form of a dialogue between Koheleth (K) and myself
(D). K: There is no meaning to life, life has no
purpose, a man's life does not change the world at
all. I don't know where I come from, and where I go. I am a blind wanderer
through life. D: May be it is better to say: there is no
meaning in ֹmֹy life. We live in a time of individual
development and the meaning of life is not only a philosophical question, but
also a question of individual experience, striving and development. You touch
here on the problem of the individual and the collective. We need a
collective (family, groups, and community), but at the same time we should
try to be aware of our individuality. The question of meaning is very
individual. And you expect to change the world? You are inflated! I must
remind you of the wise words of Job (40, 4&5): "Behold, I am of
small account; what shall I answer thee? I lay my hand upon my mouth. Once
have I spoken, but I will not answer again; Yea, twice, but I will proceed no
further." You see, Job is aware of the tremendous gap between his and
God's power. Fate is always stronger than men. This is a fact you will have
to accept in humbleness. You cannot change the world, but you can try to
change yourself! You will have to become aware of your different sides and
live a creative life- this should suffice! And how can we know where we come
from? This is the mystery of life and death, of our human existence. Do you
really have no memory of your childhood, because that could answer partly
your question where you come from! May be you had a severe trauma and this is
the reason that you cannot remember. If you decide to go to therapy,
dream-work could reveal something of your past! K: Material wealth gives me no satisfaction, and
acquiring material goods leaves me empty-hearted. Objects are just objects,
and money is just money. It does not nourish the soul. D: Of course, if you devote all your energy to
making money, to be rich, you will find no meaning in life. But this does not
mean that you should disdain money. You need it for your livelihood. You have
to find the right balance between your material and spiritual needs. This is
an individual matter. K: Simple or sophisticated pleasures of life
don't make me happy either. I have tried all the pleasures available, but my
soul is still empty. D: To find real pleasure, you have to go into
yourself; look into your soul and don't forget that suffering also belongs to
life. Real pleasure is rare; you can only have it if you are in touch with
the many elements your soul is made of. These many aspects are contradictory
at times and being happy is finding the balance and solving the conflicts
between the many aspects of your soul. Often you cannot solve the conflict immediately, you have to wait, to endure the conflict, to
suffer. Either the conflict resolves itself or is resolved by outer influence
or a decision ripens in you. There can be a conflict of loyalties, a
collision of duties like for instance a married man who has fallen in love
with another woman and cannot decide if to divorce his wife or not. Does the
love for the other woman demand the sacrifice of not being with his children?
Is the love for the other woman so deep and meaningful that not marrying her
would be a loss of soul? Divorcing or not is a fateful decision for his whole
life. Not being able to decide is suffering and fate may solve the conflict
when his wife or his lover decides to leave him. The feeling of happiness
exists because of its opposite, unhappiness; both feelings belong to our
life. K: Why do I feel worthless after completion of a
big project or undertaking? Why don't I feel content that I have achieved a
goal or purpose? Why don't I have a feeling of achievement? D: Your ambition to achieve more and more is in
your way to feel content. The completion of a project leaves you in a state
of uncertainty with regard to further undertakings. You are then afraid of
the uncertain future and don't believe that the energy for new projects will
come back to you. Doing is also creative in itself ,
and usually gives meaning to one's life. Now, you will have to accept the
feeling of emptiness after completing the project, but with the hope that the
spirit of achievement will return. A feeling of emptiness usually follows the
feeling of achievement and one can only hope that the creative energy will
come back. For this you need faith and the knowledge of former states of
depression, which were followed by activity. Because depression may be looked
upon, symbolically, as a kind of death, waking up and seeing the light may
help to step out of the depressed state and even experiencing a kind of
rebirth. Accepting the momentary state of emptiness and the hope for a renewal
will help you. K: Another thing troubles me: When I die, only a
heap of dust will remain of me and I doubt that the spirit or the soul is
eternal. D: You certainly are a profound person asking
questions about death. But you know, death is as much
a mystery as life. Nobody really knows if a beyond exists. But religious
people believe that the soul returns to its creator. Some have personal
mystical or near-death experiences, which for them are a proof that there is
life after death. It seems that you have had no personal mystical
experiences. So, you really have to find meaning in ֺtֺhֺiֺs life. Yet, many people find the answer by
believing in God and observing the religious practices, as the end of your
book suggests. By fearing God and keeping his commandments they connect with
the beyond and so find meaning in life. This solution may be open to you too.
Or else you must accept that you come from dust and will return to dust, yet
do everything to find meaning in your live. May be you had to consult a
Jungian analyst to work on the unconscious, to find an individual way to your
soul, revealing itself in dreams. Then you may feel that you are really on
the way of fulfillment, of selfrealisation. Then it might also be easier for
you to accept the opposites, in the problem discussed above, the feeling of
achievement on the one side, and the feeling of worthlessness on the other
side. K: I would like to be dead; death is better than
life. D: You are attracted by death and hope to find
there an escape from your conflicts. Death is for you a solution to the
philosophical and existential battle between good and evil. Let us hope that
in the course of analytical work you will find meaning in life and learn also
to accept periods of apathy. K: It is not good to live alone and I suffer
from it, but I was always afraid of falling into the hands of a bad woman. D: Your fear of the bad woman may point to a
deep disturbance in your primal relationship with your mother. This fear is
usually connected to the fear of the unconscious, the fear of loosing control
in life and one is the victim of fateful relationships. Have you experienced
such negative relationship with a woman? I hope that in our analytical work
positive feminine symbols will emerge and heal this deep wound. Then you will
be able to find a meaningful relationship to a "good" woman who is
the opposite of the "bad" woman. K: Although I have studied a lot and have much
knowledge, this has only increased my sorrow and disappointment with life. D: Your knowledge is purely intellectual. You
have neglected your emotional needs. In order to experience joy you must
learn to accept suffering. So far we have talked about your personal life,
but your problems also reflect the problems of our time, here and in the
world generally. Your philosophy is full of contradictions and opposites. It
is true: life is a contradiction in terms. One has to learn to live within
contradictions. There is always a yes and a no. And we have to
live with these opposites. This is often difficult and causes conflicts and
suffering, to which there is, no rational solution. Your complaints are
human. You are very much part of a collective entity. At the end of your book
you give the advise to "fear God, and keep his commandments" (12,13). This could be a solution to your problems, but if
not, you will have to find an individual answer to your problems. You may
have to undergo a long and arduous process of development, of experience of
the God within you. You also say the following words which are famous and so very
true: "To every thing there is a season, and a
time to every purpose under the heaven." (3,1) Things happen partly as a result of man's
actions, partly in spite of them. One could say that it is a matter of
"kairos", of things to happen at the "right moment". To
leave everything in the hands of God is naive, yet to see everything
dependent on man only is hubris. It is this ֹaֹnֹd that! It
is at the same time the strength of the Ego and its weakness. Within this
paradox one has to live! K: I suffer from the fact that there is no
justice in the world, and I can do nothing to change this situation and I
feel impotent. D: Well, you certainly have a point here. There
is a lot of injustice in the world and you suffer from this. It is hubris to
think that one can ever know the unknown. You will have to accept your limits
and face your vulnerability, your suffering. Don't think that you can
single-handedly change the world. Don't try to run into philosophies; it is
your personal problem you have to deal with. Fate has not been just to you!
But should we expect justice? And isn't our sense of justice very largely
subjective? To end our discourse I want to quote Job (40, 4
& 5): 4. Behold, I am of small account; 5. Once have I spoken, but I will not what shall I answer Thee? answer again; I lay my hand upon my mouth. Yea, twice, but I will proceed
no
further. 7. Escape (Jonah) Summary of the four chapters: Jonah is ordered by God to preach against A big fish swallows Jonah and he remains in its
belly for three days and three nights. He says a prayer of thanks for his
deliverance. Once again God orders Jonah to go to Jonah is dismayed because he feels frustrated
that his prophecy was not fulfilled. Upon the first request by God he already
did not go to General commentary on the book of Jonah: Little is said about the life of the prophet
before and after what is written in the biblical story. (Only in II King
14:25 does he prophesy the victory of Jerobeam II on the Arameans.) Most probably the book belongs to the post -
exile time, as the long-destroyed Different commentators pursue that Jonah is the
least understood and mostly misused book of the Bible. Is it historical? The
essential teaching of the book is that the love, care and forgiveness of God
are not grudged to non-Jews. Envy is reproached. As parable the narration serves fi. to describe God's mercy in a narrative way. In the
allegoric explanation Jonah is the actor of Jonah in post-biblical scriptures: The post-biblical narrative scriptures (Aggadah,
Midrash, and Kabbalah) are a commentary on the biblical story. They deal with
biblical motives with a new updated understanding. In a similar way, a depth-
psychological analysis may reveal the story's symbolic content in a way
closer to modern thought and at the same time establish a connection with
religious tradition. In the Aggadah it is said that Jonah refused to
go to It is further said, that the eyes of the fish
served as windows; a pearl in the innermost of the fish shone and Jonah saw
all the secrets of the waters or of the depth. In Midrash Jonah it is said the belly of the
fish is the underworld (sheol). Where do we take this? Because it says (2,3): ". Out of the belly of the netherworld cried I,
And thou heardest my voice". And it is said: "..and
Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights" (2,1):
These are the three days in which man is in the grave, and his body, his
intestine split. Here the underworld is identical with death and the freeing
from the fish with resurrection of the dead. Depth-psychological commentary: The motive of being swallowed and the
commentaries on the pearl are most important. Exactly because Jonah does ֹnֹoֹt accept the godly command to preach against The fact that Jonah explains to the sailors that
he is the cause of the storm is of a high moral standard. He lets the sailors
throw him into the sea, which equals self-sacrifice. This may be the reason
for the revelation of the Self by the eyes of the fish and the experience of
seeing the pearl. Jonah is angry because he considers God’s mercy
for Jona obeys the second call of God to prophesy
the destruction of Being in the womb of the mother (the belly of
the fish) means: being immersed into the realm of the mothers, into nature,
into the night, into death: and then follows renewal. The night-sea-journey
of Jonah is an archetypal image for individuation. Therapeutically the Book of
Jonah can help those who are afraid of the night, and possibly the depressed.
Because depression can be looked upon symbolically as death, rebirth takes
place, a waking-up from sleep and a getting out of depression. With other
words, there can be meaning in depression, because in the unconscious
transformation and rebirth takes place. It is discussion, an
"Auseinandersetzung" with the powers of darkness. The book of Jonah contains the motive of renewal
of consciousness by immersing into the unconscious. (Similar motives: are the
Mikweh [ritual bath], baptism, bathing in the Jordan-river) Jung (CW 7, par. 160) writes, that “the hero (Hiawatha)
is, like Jonah, invariably swallowed by the monster…”. Relating to the hero-myth, Jung (CW 5, par. 510
and 511) states, after quoting Pirke de Rabbi Elieser, that “In the darkness of the unconscious a treasure
lies hidden, the same ‘treasure hard to attain’ which in our text, and in
many other places too, is described as the shining pearl, or, to quote Paracelsus,
as the ‘mystery’, by which is meant a fascinosum par excellence. It is these
inherited possibilities of ‘spiritual’ or ‘symbolic’ life and of progress
which form the ultimate, though unconscious, goal of regression. By serving
as a means of expression, as bridges and pointers, symbols help to prevent
the libido from getting stuck...The hero is a hero just because he sees
resistance to the forbidden goal in all life’s difficulties and yet fights
that resistance with the whole-hearted yearning that strives towards the
treasure hard to attain, and perhaps unattainable-a yearning that paralyses
and kills the ordinary man.” The following passage illustrates Jung’s
approach to the Oedipus complex (CW 5, par. 654): “The so-called Oedipus complex with its famous
incest tendency changes at this level into a “Jonah-and-the-Wale” complex,
which has any number of variants, for instance the whitch who eats children,
the wolf, the ogre, and so on.” Neumann (1960, p. 162&n), discussing “the
negative elementary character of the Great Mother” relates to the Jonah myth
as follows: “The feminine is the belly-vessel as woman and
also as earth. She is the vessel of doom, guiding the nocturnal course of the
stars through the underworld; she is the belly of the “whale dragon”, which,
as in the story of Jonah, swallows the sun hero every night in the west; she
is “the destroyer at eventide”. Joseph Campell (p. 90-94), in a chapter titled
“The Belly of the whale” discusses the motif and
ends with a picture (Fig. 5. The Night-Sea Journey) where the casting of
Joseph into the well, the swallowing of Jonah by the whale, and the
entombment of Christ are placed side by side (from the German Biblia
Pauperum, 1471). Jonah is a sun-hero, i.e. he goes symbolically
the way of the sun, the night-sea-journey. He is thrown into the sea, into
darkness, into the unconscious. He is swallowed by the great fish, but comes
out again into the light. He is reborn, changed by the experience as it
happens time and again in analysis, in the individuation process. It is the
way to consciousness. Therefore the night-sea-journey is an image of the
individuation-process. 8. Love
(The Song of Songs) a. Motto “Love
is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and
then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to
work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is
inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it
is not promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to
mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying
awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No,
don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”,
which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love
has burnt away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother
and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when
all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches
we found that we were one tree and not two. But sometimes the petals fall
away and the roots have not entwined. Imagine giving up your home and your
people, only to discover after six months, a year, three years that the trees
have had no roots and have fallen over. Imagine the desolation. Imagine the
imprisonment.” “Corellis’s
Mandolin” A Novel by Louis de Bernieres, Vintage
Books, February 2001 (p. 281). When two hearts part That once loved each other It is such a great suffering As no greater there is. The words sound so sad: Good bye, good bye for ever.. When two hearts part That once loved each other. When first I sensed That love can break, I felt as if the sun had gone, Although the day was bright. Felix Mendelsohn, 1809-1847, words by
Emanuel Geibel, 1815-1884. (My translation from the German) Man and
Woman created He them Genesis
1,27 b. IntroductionLove and sexuality are important factors of life-the
focus of enjoyment and the continuation of the species. Sex is an instinct, an involuntary drive to
sexual activity. Instinct takes hold of the personality and sexuality is then
acted out without reflection. Yet from a deeper perspective sexuality is
really an archetypal activity, a human behavior pattern. It has a spiritual
dimension, even if the partners are completely unaware of it. One can state
that sexuality is usually lived unconsciously and there is little awareness
of its symbolic and spiritual meaning. The sexual drive is one of the
strongest components in the formations of human behavior and of the formation
of social relationships as well. Thus repression of the sexual desire helped to create
a mode or kind of behavior that befitted their spiritual and moral ideology
at a certain time in history. Sexuality without the blessing of God became a
sin. Thus sex can then be performed only as means of procreation. The result
was a puritanical attitude to sex. In the 20th century, as a
result of the development in science, the decline of the influence of religions,
the social changes and liberal thought and the free communication have
changed the attitude to sexuality. It has become a central theme of interest,
as evident in films, literature, video clips and "sex shops". Too
often sexuality is connected only with physical pleasure and lust. Thus it is
sex without love. Jung helped us to understand sex as a symbol, different
from Freud and Adler. Jung stated that, parallel to a conscious man‑woman relationship, is always a relationship of animus and anima
in the unconscious. Thus sexuality is a symbol
of the union of the feminine and masculine principles. This human activity is
a ritual, the symbolic aspect of it being mostly unconscious. Sex is a numinous, mystical experience,
which by words can only be hinted at. The following is my attempt to understand the mystery of love and sex
over and above the physical and emotional satisfaction it gives. It is
especially in orgasm where the Self is experienced in its numinosity. One
is-for a moment- overpowered by the archetype of the coniunctio, of the union
of opposites. Only during analysis, at the age of about thirty, had I become aware
of the spiritual aspects of sexuality. Jung’s “Psychology of the
Transference” and his “Mysterium Coniunctionis” were a signpost for a deeper
understanding of sexuality and of the sexual act. What I so far had
considered to be simply a source of pleasure and release of tension, now became, in addition, a numinous experience of
the union of opposites, of male and female, of man and woman, of masculine
and feminine energy. I have experienced both the pleasure and the suffering connected with
the ups and downs of relationships and the end of meaningful relationships.
Then I was, so to speak, “thrown back onto myself”. With the help of dreams
and active imagination I tried to overcome the hurt and cope with the
situation. As far as my own
position is concerned, as a psychoanalyst working in The subject of love and sex is vast
so that my contribution is very moderate.
I tried to clarify
by way of a symbolic, Jungian understanding the deeper meaning of love and
sex. Jung’s writing on “Mysterium Coniunctionis”, CW 14, was an invaluable
base or help for my writing. c. The Song of Songs The Song of Songs, ”Shir
ha'shirim”, is an erotic poem of rare beauty with metaphorical descriptions
of the mystery of the male female relationship. It talks about romantic love
and passion. It is musical poetry, an expression of feelings, a mutual song
of love between man and woman. A sensitive poet must have written it. One is
moved, because the images of the poem stir the deepest layers of the soul.
The partners describe each other in beautiful metaphors: landscapes and
towns, like Gilead, Lebanon, Carmel, Jerusalem; flowers, like the rose of
Sharon, the lily of the valley; animals, like the gazelle, the young hart,
the dove. The use of symbols to address one another points
to the symbolic level of the relationship, to a reality beyond the conscious
relationship of the partners. Something of the divine, of another realm, of
the unspeakable mystery is hinted at and is felt. Love in its archetypal
dimension is a fascinating secret, an enigma to all, and no psychological
interpretation is sufficient to `explain' the mystery of love. Should we not
just leave it at that? Can an interpretation of any kind (religious,
psychological) add anything? Yet we wonder why we are touched by the Song of
Songs. To be touched belongs to the realm of feeling, of experiencing, and
this experiencing is mystical. The protagonists of the Song of Songs represent animus and anima, the royal couple, "the royal brother‑sister pair, and hence the tension of opposites from which the divine child is born as the symbol of unity". (Jung, CW 9/II par. 59). In the
story the two protagonists are equals. People in love address each other in
endearing names. Some are personal like “beloved, friend and brother and
sister”, others are archetypal like King and Bride. The fact that there are
both personal and transpersonal names means that the relationship is at the
same time personal and symbolic. This holds true for every deep man-woman
relationship; beautiful examples are the first verses that open the Song of Songs: “ The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s. Let him kiss me with the kiss of
his mouth, for thy love is better than wine. Your ointments have a goodly
fragrance; thy name is as ointment poured forth; therefore do the maidens
love thee. Draw me, we will run after thee, The king has brought me into his
chambers; We will be glad and rejoice in there, we will find your love more
fragrant than wine! Sincerely do they love you”. Although the first verse says that Solomon, the man,
wrote the song, the first person that speaks of her love and exposes
the content of the whole book is the Shulamite, not Solomon. In the second
verse she describes how she looks by saying, “I am black yet comely...” An
exact translation of the Hebrew text would be "I am black AND comely". The word
"yet" in the English translation means that in spite of her being
black, she is comely, whereas the Hebrew text says that black and comely
belong naturally together in the Shulamite. But we have to ask ourselves why
does the Shulamite have to mention her blackness? She is apparently in a
surrounding of “white” or pale people. As the beloved of Solomon, her
blackness has a special significance. Is he attracted to her because she is
black? She is different from the other women and by getting involved with her, Solomon has a new experience of his anima projected
to the Shulamite. In the next verse she tells us that she is burnt by the
sun, which means that she was exposed to the sun like a shepherd or a country
girl. She is different, not like the ladies of the court and the city who
shun the sun. She is a girl of nature, and uses the nature she knows so well
and loves to describe her looks. Verse 2:1: “I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys” etc. Solomon on his
part describes the Shulamite as the most beautiful of women and uses
masculine metaphors: (1:9): “I have compared thee, O my love, to a steed in Pharaoh’s chariots.” This verse has a
lot of interesting symbolical meaning. Pharaoh is the epitome of an absolute
ruler who was considered a God. His horses symbolize masculinity, energy,
power and beauty. The horses were adorned with beautiful jewelry. They pulled
Pharaoh’s chariot, which means conquest and victory. He describes her further
as a rose among thorns standing out from other girls. Chapter 4 is full with
outstanding metaphors describing the Shulamite and every part of her body.
There is an overflowing love and sensuality that leads to copulation at the
end of the chapter, which describes the Shulamite as a closed garden, meaning
that she is a virgin. Yet she is longing for the man and invites him into her
garden to eat her fruit, which is a clear hint. |