Jung, The Red Book

Discussion on literature other than by the Star of Azazel.
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Nefastos
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Re: Jung, The Red Book

Post by Nefastos »

Benemal wrote: Sat Aug 01, 2020 8:19 pmThat's annoying. I think I hate the book again now. Which chapter was I supposed to do then? I guess I could take a look at it tomorrow.

Since Insanus already said he'll go through "Incantations", which is the next chapter in line, I think you dodged (or took) the bullet already this time.

This shows how it's a bit tricky that we don't have a coordinator for this reading group anymore... No matter, I still think it's nice to go through this text, whether it's by love or hate at times.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Re: Jung, The Red Book

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Nefastos wrote: Sun Aug 02, 2020 5:33 pm This shows how it's a bit tricky that we don't have a coordinator for this reading group anymore... No matter, I still think it's nice to go through this text, whether it's by love or hate at times.

I try to compensate for my neglect. I will write this month on the next chapter after the one fra Insanus is doing. So it will be both Insanus and obnoxion in August, and hopefully it will be smooth sailing after that. You'll have to excuse me, as I am having health problems (going from surgery to surgery, it seems), and I find it very difficult to concentrate on some of my commitments.


THE updated LIST FOR 2020 - 2021
(Twice a year each)

Insanus (July)
obnoxion (August)
Nefastos (September)
Wyrmfang (October)
Astraya (November)
Benemal (Decemver)

YEAR 2021
lnsanus (January)
obnoxion (February)
Nefastos (March)
Wyrmfang (April)
Astraya (May)
Benemal (June)
Insanus (July)
obnoxion (August)
Nefastos (September)
Wyrmfang (October)
Astraya (November)
Benemal (December)
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Re: Jung, The Red Book

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obnoxion wrote: Sun Aug 02, 2020 6:40 pmI try to compensate for my neglect.

I'm sorry for heaping coals upon you. I was actually thinking of Jiva's absence, and didn't remember you had took or inherited the coordinating position. Thank you for the list!
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Re: Jung, The Red Book

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INCANTATIONS

Images 50-64 are mentioned, but I didn't figure what that meant. Perhaps they are just the pages from illustrated version, I don't know. No pictures, sorry! :(

---

The incantations seem to be invocations both of Christ yet unborn and of god of paradoxical nature, Abraxas and gospels are mentioned in the footnotes. The incantations themselves seem to be just adorations or "incubations" , healing Izdubar so there's not much to comment (or, I missed everything that's important)

"I forgive myself these words as you forgive me for wanting blazing light" feels like embarrassed wish for spiritual/magical experience, like one knows he should show respect either way, miracle or no miracle.

"We asked the earth, we asked the heaven(...) we found you in the egg" seems like occult instruction to sublimate the crude elements of perception to aetheric akasha, egg of darkness and maybe this part balances the earlier, also relating to imagination.

The last section of these incantations looks like something from Catechism of Lucifer, banishing one's father and mother for God, dressing in woman's clothes, seeing warriors but breaking only your own armor & c.

After these incantations Jung has "made everything great small and everything small great" but he sees he is still not ready after all, because "an egg one carries in his pocket" is not worth blaspheming. He "hates the pitifulness of God". This becomes a realization:

"Nothing stands firm: you touch yourself and you turn to dust. You touch the God and he hides terrified in the egg. You force the gates of Hell: the sound of cackling masks and the music of fools approaches you. You storm Heaven: stage scenery totters and the prompter in the box falls into a swoon. You notice, you are not true, it is not true above, it is not true below, left and right are deceptions. Wherever you grasp is air, air, air. "

Jung has his God izdubar in his pocket and could end the race of Gods, but decides that he loves the Great One too much. I think we see Jung's interpretation of Nietzsche's" death of God" here, even more so because in the earlier chapter Izdubar was squeezed to a size of an egg and there was talk "one used think he could murder a god".

"I felled the Great One, I mourned him, I did not want to leave him, since I loved him because no mortal being rivals him. Out of love I devised a trick that relieved him of heaviness and freed him from the confines of space. I took from him - out of love- form and corporeality. I enclosed him lovingly in the maternal egg. Should I slay him, the defenseless one whom I loved? Should I shatter the delicate shell of his grave, and expose him to the weightlessness and unboundedness of the winds of the world? But did I not sing the incantations for his incubation? Did I not do this out of love for him? Why do I love him? I do not want to tear the love for the Great One from my heart. I want to love my God, the defenseless and hopeless one. I want to care for him, like a child."

Now the egg seems to play a triple role: it is akasha, dead god and unborn Christ. God is dead, but could be born again from love of life, not as omnipotent dominant superego, but as fragile object of love. The incantations maybe are his way of lighting something like this in his heart. The opening of Jesus' grave also comes to mind.

The chapter ends with these words:
" A sunless spirit becomes the parasite of the body. But the God feeds the spirit. "

Seems like an attempt at nietzschean spirituality that rejects anti-life, truer world & c. thinking and wants to see holiness in this world now. If you want it darker, it could also mean that God feeds the sunless spirit to be more of a parasite and gives it strenght to keep going towards death. Or even both as a process of spiritualization.
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Re: Jung, The Red Book

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My contribution for this month will be posted a little Late....
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Re: Jung, The Red Book

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Since sodalis obnoxion is currently held by obstacles unrelated to his own willingness to continue the commentary, I will henceforth act as a coordinator of the reading group. I will present comments of the texts in obnoxion's turns, if he is unable to participate at that time. So the above given schedule now looks like this:

THE updated LIST FOR 2020 - 2021
(Twice a year each)

Nefastos (August & September): XI The Opening of the Egg AND XII Hell
Wyrmfang (October): XIII The Sacrificial Murder
Astraya (November): XIV Divine Folly
Benemal (December): XV Nox secunda

YEAR 2021
lnsanus (January): XVI Nox tertia
obnoxion (or JN) (February): XVII Nox quarta
Nefastos (March): XVIII The Three Prophecies
Wyrmfang (April): XIX The Gift of Magic
Astraya (May): XX The Way of the Cross
Benemal (or Insanus) (June): XXI The Magician
Insanus (July): Scrutinies 1-3 (Reader's Edition p.461-483)
obnoxion (or JN) (August): Scrutinies 4-6 (RE p.483-515)
Nefastos (September): Scrutinies 7-11 (RE p.515-534)
Wyrmfang (October): Scrutinies 12-14 (RE p.534-553)
Astraya (November): Epilogue & Appendix A (RE p.555-561)
Benemal (or Insanus) (December): Appendices B & C (RE p.562-582)

And we're done.

If brother Jiva will read this at any point, my apologies that I wrongly remembered him being the first reading group director. It seems that our reading just accidentally sprung out from Jiva's original thread discussing the Red Book.

EDIT: Benemal's perhaps out.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Re: Jung, The Red Book

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Cap. xi. (Chapter Eleven)
THE OPENING OF THE EGG


In the last chapters, Jung has met with Izdubar (Gilgamesh), who was coming from the East, when Jung was travelling from the West. When bull-man and man-god Izdubar was vanquished by thoughts of scientific world without a divine meaning, he was reduced to a state that Jung had to form into an egg to carry Izdubar with him. Now it has come the time to open that egg once again.

The beginning of the chapter, where Izdubar is released from the egg as likeness of smoke, brings to mind the Solomonically lamp-sealed djinns from the Thosand and One Nights. Assuming once again his human like appearance in titanic proportions the demigod once again stands before Jung "enormous, transformed, and complete". He tells that his time inside the egg felt like being in a narrow & cool grave, under & over a dark star-glittering sky.

It becomes clear that god Izdubar is also the Sun, who has once again travelled his course under the Earth. "You are the sun, the eternal light – most powerful one, forgive me for carrying you", says Jung. The inspiring logic of a dream and a fairy tale is once again seen in the author's journey, where archetypes live, waxing and waning, great becoming small & small becoming great. Izdubar was met as an Oriental hero, an archetype of the East, out of which he became what the East means, the Sun itself, which (to Jung here) means God itself.

It also seems possible, as one part of the sublime process, that part of the dreamer once again wants to cling to the ready-made, easy story of the resurrecting God (who is still one-sided). Jung writes that his "soul swam like a fish in his sea of fire". The fish is a particularly Christian symbol for the soul, and the sea of fire is the upward triangle (the most common emblem of God). He even indirectly refers to Virgin Mary by mentioning the mother of God, whose heart will be pierced by the sword (a common depictation of Mary's part in the Christ's Passion):

The Red Book wrote:Woe betide the mother who gives birth to a God! If she gives birth to a wounded and pain-stricken God, a sword will pierce her soul. But if she gives birth to an unblemished God, then Hell will open to her, from which monstrous serpents will rise convulsively to suffocate the mother with miasma. Birth is difficult, but a thousand times more difficult is the hellish afterbirth. (p.309)

Jung seems to think that a truly purified God would be either one-sided or too demanding for man to follow. "All the dragons and monstrous serpents of eternal emptiness follow behind the divine son. What remains of human nature when the God has become mature and seized all power?" (p.309-310)

The author then writes quite a long & winding text (from page 310 to 314, most of the chapter) about evil. I will come back to this in the next chapter. Briefly put, I think that Jung has something quite specific & perhaps even personal in mind when he speaks of this "evil". Otherwise, the chapter makes only little sense, and does not hold either metaphysically, metaphorically, or poetically. I would interpret that there is present a good deal of inner pressure, because the dreamer (the seer) jumped too eagerly from one standpoint into another. First he was a Western pilgrim, on his way to East, and instantly after meeting a Near-Eastern figure, he took that demigod figure as his own absolute resurrecting God-image. So, the pilgrimage is still in its half-point, and the birth of the Sun becomes the birth of the shadows instead of immaculate joy that he would like it to be. Cf.:

The Red Book wrote:Through haste and increased willing and action we want to escape from emptiness and also from evil. (p.313)

But instead of making an amalgam, the seer once again takes a U-turn & continues by saying that "we [must] accept emptiness, destroy the image of the form within us, negate the God, and descend into the abyss and awfulness of matter." (p.313) Spasms like these are extremely common form of the birth-pangs of revitalizing spiritual understanding; things try to turn from the new forms into the old with the slightest provocation, until the new form itself is found without haste & surplus zeal.
At the end of the chapter there are four pictures. This example maybe deals with the necessary, organic presence of "evil" (as Jung calls it) in the system:

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Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Re: Jung, The Red Book

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Since the last post's commentary was about the August chapter, I continue at once to the September text of Liber Secundus. It is:

Cap. xii. (Chapter Twelve)
HELL


About two years ago, my Red Book turn was about Jung's "Descent Into Hell in the Future" (Liber Primus III). Now it seems that it comes to me to descend with the author into Hell. It is not the same than it was the last time. After "creation of my God", Jung reaches the underworld in a vision.

The Red Book wrote:I find myself in a gloomy vault, whose floor consists of damp stone slabs. In the middle there is a column from which ropes and axes hang. At the foot of the column there lies an awful serpent-like tangle of human bodies. (Reader's edition p.315)

Among the bodies are the body of a woman, grasping an eye of one of the three powerful demons. Should she be threatened with more violence, she would rip her tormentor's eye out with one final effort, and thus they remaind locked in an impasse.

Much of the chapter deals with this theme of the demon's eye, and his inability to sacrifice it.

The Red Book wrote:A voice speaks: "The evil one cannot make a sacrifice, he cannot sacrifice his eye, victory is with the one who can sacrifice." (p.315)

This is in obvious contradiction with my own interpretation, or the brotherhood's symbolism. This is something that I thought quite a lot also when reading the previous chapter, The Opening of the Egg, where Jung seems to mean by "evil" something quite different than I do.

I quote from the second chapter of Cista Mystica, which deals with the same symbolism of sacrificing the eye of the demon:

Fosforos wrote:The right eye of Bulgakov's Satan, or Woland, is “dead and empty.” Wotan-Odin gives his eye as a pledge of knowledge, and Tolkien's Sauron represents himself in the form of a flaming eye, which incidentally has an astonishing resemblance to the image of the Asuras, the jealous gods of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The eye in general symbolizes perception and the left eye in particular represents intellect and self-consciousness. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks about the eye in several places: “The light of the body is the eye,” he teaches. “If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” And elsewhere: “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” The right eye represents the objective, spiritual perception – that on earth is a subjective experience – while the left eye represents the subjective, intellectual or empirical perception – that is seen on earth as objective. Lucifer represents the latter; perception that is cognitive but separate from the connection to the totality, the concentration on self and selfhood. The eye, as a symbol of the extreme limit of the ego or self-consciousness, is explained when we remember that a) the image of the objective world is reflected into the spherical form of the eye as inverted and b) the eye is not perceptible to itself without the use of external instruments. (p.137-138)

In Jung's vision, this more holistic view on Satan is polarized into two: the sacrificed & the sacrificer, the demon and the hero, still locked in their battle in hell. In Fosforos, these two have been united. We may continue comparing the following page quote with our Hymn of the Living Vine:

The Red Book wrote:Nothing is more valuable to the evil one than his eye, since only through his eye can emptiness seize gleaming fulness. (p.316)
Fosforos wrote:O! with the greatest joy I pierce myself with this sword, kissing the hilt; and my fingers, unto which the living wine with a color of a garnet gem is shed are numb already, saturated with joy, changed into the one single Eye beholding itself in the depths filled with brightness. (p.191)

The same difference between the approaches to the eye of the demon (Red Book's dichotomic vs. Fosforos' solipsistic) can also be seen from the brotherhood's seal. From the article explaining the said seal:

The Seal of the Brotherhood wrote:The same dichotomy that we see in the two pentacles & in the two halves of the countenance, is once again repeated in the rays that shoot upwards from the forehead. In the forehead there the place for the third eye, and beyond it, the subtle machine of brains and thinking. [Part 1b]
The uppermost in our symbol is the eye and the halo of fire surrounding it, and this continues the path of flames that is directed upwards through the third eye on the forehead. The deep meaning of the symbol of the eye is beyond the ken of this article, but briefly put it always means consciousness [in English the word is especially delicious: "Eye"~"I"] – and because of this intellect in the widest sense of the word – that is born from the meeting of two worlds. [Part 3]

Please note the similarity (sameness) of the eye uppermost in the brotherhood's seal and the "vesica piscis, the symbol of the Fish that is formed where two circles (worlds, latent consciousness) intersect. From the same comes also the fish symbol for the soul in ancient Christianity. (The sign for the actual doctrine of Jesus, as opposed to the cross symbol of killing one's master.)
The Seal of the Brotherhood wrote:Whereas Unity is Absolute and thus unable to perceive in conventional level, its perception being too total in order to draw out separate details, manifestation of consciousness always needs two opposite factors inside that ultimate Unity. This is what the eye is about, for as we see, it comes to being from the two circles' intersection: two forms of otherness draw in the midst of themselves the EGO or the one who perceives. The symbolism of the eye is repeated in the cosmic yoni (female sexual organ), which in the same way represents the gate between the world: the point where two becomes one in the act of impregnation, and from where one becomes as two in the act of giving birth.

In the seal of the brotherhood the eye is in the position of honor, as its highest point, but this does not mean – as can be easily seen when the symbolism is taken in its whole – that the Star of Azazel would emphasize "the Doctrine of the Eye", like the system on reason against intution and love has sometimes been named. The location of the Eye above the head indicates that we are not dealing with the eye of the ego in the world, but with the union of the Ego & the Monad in the "divine substance". The elevated eye of the seal is thus the Logosic aspect of Satan as the immanent mind of spiritual world. [Part 3]

In the vision of Jung, heroine is also grasping a delicate silver fishing rod, that goes through the eye of the demon. This "fishing rod" in its (painful!) union with eye also points to the before mentioned symbolic sameness of the Eye and the Fish. But in the vision of Hell, the rod that should seek to lure the individual soul peacefully instead has penetrated it in most awfully Martian way, by force. Practically, the heroic anima has raped its apparent enemy – the "demon" of the other side – by forcing the silvery rod through the eye's upper yoni. The situation itself is hell. The author's still very problematic approach echoes with the feverish ideations like:

The Red Book wrote:I also want evil for the sake of my God. (---) He who does not want evil will have no chance to save his soul from Hell. (pages 316 & 318)

Yet in the end of the chapter the hellish approach starts to melt, from this union in light-filled void of self-pierced eye:

The Red Book wrote:There is nothing the emptiness can sacrifice, since it always suffers lack. Only fullness can sacrifice, since it has fullness. Emptiness cannot sacrifice its hunger for fullness, since it cannot deny its own essence. (p. 319)

This is important wisdom, and once again, paves the understanding of a deeper tantric approaches. It reminds me of what Gandhi said about courage and violence: that the one who has no courage cannot choose giving up violence, but that pacifism is a virtue available for those who are already strong. There is a form of giving up violence that is actually a form of cowardice, and that should not be confused with true heroic self-sacrifice in refusing violence.

As a Satanist, I would like to wrap the two interpretations together with the final quote, being practically same as the quote I quoted in Argarizim (p.76) from Blavatsky, who in turn made the quote from Anna Kingsford, quoting her master who quoted the secret kabbala. Jung's version is:

The Red Book wrote:The evil one is holy. (p. 319)
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Re: Jung, The Red Book

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Remember this year's deadlines for chapter presentations:
Wyrmfang (October): XIII The Sacrificial Murder
Astraya (November): XIV Divine Folly
Benemal (December): XV Nox secunda

Also, please feel free to comment the other writers' comments, or the chapters they are dealing with.

In case our Finnish brethren wish to study the original version of the Red Book – with pictures & calligraphic manuscripts – it is possible in the monthly Lucifer lodge meetings, since the brotherhood library has recently been moved to Helsinki.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Re: Jung, The Red Book

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Chapter xiii: The Sacrificial Murder

The author comes with a nauseating feeling to a dark valley full of serpents. He encounters a badly deformed body a young girl and is utterly disgusted. Soon he also notices a veiled woman near the body who demands him to remove the liver of the body and eat a portion of it. The author is horrified but ultimately succumbs because the woman says she is the soul of the girl and this has to be done. Once the author only barely succeeds in the task and notices that the woman looks somehow familiar, she thanks him and says she is his soul.

This scene is meant to continue the theme that evil is necessary catalyte of the good, necessary in order to know one´s soul. Jung talks about the sun as God and sons of the sun as something that must not yet sink into, and similar metaphors which all point to the argument that good and evil spring from the same vitality which must not be completely tamed even though it is dangerous. However, Jung is ambivalent on what is evil in the proper sense of the term - something that really must not be done - and what ultimately serves greater good. Perhaps, according to Jung, there is no clear boundary that could be pointed out. He makes the argument that the meaning of the most important truths "is too deep to grasp other than in symbols". It is also interesting that even though the chapter is named "the sacrificial murder", the author does not actually murder but tastes the liver of a body. An act which he calls, among other words meant to express utter moral disgust, necrophilic.
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