Christ as Archetype
As
we know, Dionysus and Attis represented the early-dying sun-god, the son of the
mother, the god who dies in the spring. The date of the Feast
of Easter has been taken over from the Feast of Attis, and mosaics were executed
in ancient
To
make sure of it’s creative élan, the newly converted Christians were emphatic on
contending that Christianity was entirely different from the cult of Dionysus.
But the similarity of the
archetypal figure was so striking that everyone
felt very doubtful, which accounts for such stress being laid on the fact
that Jesus Christ was an historical personality in contrast to the archetypal
god figure. TPoPA 252
(If
in a story or dream one) returns in the form of Attis or Dionysus, (that) could
be said to represent an attempt by the unconscious to create an archetypal
experience which would bridge the gulf created by this sudden Christianization.
One might think that, having passed through this experience, the author
might now really understand what the figure of Christ means. If you
sweep away all of the historical dust, you see that this is a return to the
original experience of what it means to take the cross upon oneself, to carry it
and be crucified with Christ, only there is a different shade of something more
ecstatic and more dynamic and, in an archaic way, vital. It is an attempt
of the unconscious to recreate the Christian symbol and revive it in a form in
which it is linked again with the deeper layers of the personality.
TPoPA 252
How
widespread and how vital this problem is can be seen by the fact that one finds
the same attempt of the unconscious in a completely different sphere.
Those among you who heard my lectures on Niklaus von der Flue will
remember that there Christ appears with a bearskin – as a Berserk – and there
too it is an attempt not to abolish the symbol of Christ but to reinterpret it,
linking it with the archaic layers of the instinctive psyche.
Only if we understand it in this more complete form can the symbol of Christ
survive, for if it is not anchored in the depths of the soul it will be cast off
and there will be a return to atheism and neo-paganism in some form.
The
same thing can be seen in the Negro spirituals, which give a parallel
phenomenon, for in them there is a pagan layer of the psyche with its symbolic
expressions and religious emotions, and over that is layered a Christian
doctrine, just a lacquer which any kind of movement or anti-propaganda would
remove. Unless the main
archetype of this Christian doctrine,
which in our civilization is called
Christ, constellates a similar archetypal
symbol and links it up with the whole emotional personality, whereby it becomes
a living faith, only then can people understand from underneath what Christ
means in them personally. Otherwise it is purely intellectual
and there is the
hole in the staircase. Below one still prays
to Dionysus, or in these cases, naturally, Wotan, because the one who is speared
and who hangs on the World Tree is Wotan:
Christ doctrine Christ
Pagan Archetype
Wotan (in
Constellated below
Mercurius-Kerunnus (in
In