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alchemy.GG Their aim ,vas to extract the original divine SpIrIt out of the chaos, and this extract was called the quinta essentia, aqua permanens, vowp eEio/l, {3a~r, or tinctura. A famous alchemist, ]ohannes de Rupescissa (d. 1375),G7 calls the quintessence "le ciel humain," the human sky or heaven. For him it was a blue liquid and incorruptible like the sky. He says that the quintessence is of the colour of the sky "and our sun has adorned it, as the sun adorns the sky." The sun is an allegory of gold. He says: "This sun is true gold." He continues: "These two things joined together influence in us ... the condition of the Heaven of heavens, and of the heavenly Sun." His idea is, obviously, that the quintessence, the blue sky with the golden sun in it, evokes corresponding images of the heaven and the heavenly sun in ourselves. It is a picture of a blue and golden microcosm,68 and I take it to be a direct parallel to Guillaume's celestial vision. The colours are, however, reversed; with Rupescissa the disc is golden and the sky blue. My patient, therefore, having a similar arrangement, seems to lean more towards the alchemical side. 
	161 	The miraculous liquid, the divine water, called sky or 
heaven, probably refers to the supra-celestial waters of Genesis 1: 7. In its functional aspect it was thought to be a sort of baptismal water which, like the holy water of the Church, possesses a creative and transformative quality.69 The Catholic Church 
66 For instance, the genius of the planet Mercury reveals the mysteries to PseudoDemocritus. (Berthelot, Aleh. grees, I, Introduction, p. 236.) 
67 J. de Rupescissa, La Vertu, p. 19. 
68 Djabir, in La Livre de la Misericorde, says that the philosophers' stone is equal to a microcosm. (Berthelot, La Chimie au moyen age, Ill, p. 179.) 
69 It is difficult not to assume that the alchemists were influenced by the allegorical style of patristic literature. They even claimed some of the Fathers as representatives of the Royal Art, for instance Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Alanus de Insulis. A text like the "Aurora consurgens" is full of allegorical interpretations of the scriptures. It has even been ascribed to Thomas Aquinas. Nevertheless, water was in fact used as an allegory of the Holy Spirit: "Water is the living grace of the Holy Spirit" (Rupert, Abbot of Deutz, in Migne, P.L., vo!. 169, co!. 353). "Flowing water is the Holy Spirit" (Bruno, Bishop of Wiirzburg, in Migne, P.L., vo!. 142, col. 293). "Water is the infusion of the Holy Spirit" (Garnerius of St. Victor, in Migne, P.L., vo!. 193, col. 279). Water is also an allegory of Christ's humanity (Gaudentius, in Migne, P.L., vol. 20, col. 983)' Very often water appears as dew (ras Gedeonis), and dew, likewise, is an allegory of Christ: 
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still performs the rite of the benedictio fontis on Holy Saturday before Easter.70 The rite consists in a repetition of the descensus sPiritus sancti in aquam. The ordinary water thereby acquires the divine quality of transforming and giving spiritual rebirth to man. This is exactly the alchemical idea of the divine water, and there would be no difficulty whatever in deriving the aqua permanens of alchemy from the rite of the benedictio fontis were it not that the former is of pagan origin and certainly the older of the two. We find the miraculous water mentioned in the first treatises of Greek alchemy, which belong to the first century.71 Moreover the descent of the spirit into Physis is a Gnostic legend that greatly influenced Mani. And it was possibly through Manichean influences that it became one of the main ideas of Latin alchemy. The aim of the philosophers was to transform imperfect matter chemically into gold, the panacea, or the elixir vitae, but philosophically or mystically into the 
"Dew is seen in the fire" (Romanus, De theoPhania, in Pitra, Analeeta saem .. I, p. 21). "Now has Gideon's dew flowed on earth" (Roman us, De nativitate, ibid., p. 237). The alchemists thought that their aqua permanens was endued with a virtue which they called "flos" (flower). It had the power of changing body into spirit and giving it an incorruptible quality (Turba phi!., ed. Ruska, p. 197). The water was also called "acetum" (acid), "whereby God finished his work, whereby also bodies take on spirit and are made spiritual" (Turba, p. 126). Another name for it is "spiritus sanguis" (blood spirit, Turba, p. 129). The Turba is an early Latin treatise of the 12th century, translated from an originally Arabic compilation dating back to the 9th and 10th centuries. Its contents, however, stem from Hellenistic sources. The Christian allusion in "spiritualis sanguis" might be due to Byzantine influence. Aqua perrnanens is quicksilver, argentum vivum (Hg). "Our living silver is our clearest water" (Rosarium phil., in Art. aurif_, 11, p213). The aqua is also called fire (ibid., p. 218)_ The body, or substance, is transformed by water and fire, a complete parallel to the Christian idea of baptism and spiritual transformation. 
70 Missale Romanum. The rite is old and was known as the "lesser (or greater) blessing of salt and water" from about the 8th century. 
71 In "Isis the Prophetess to her Son Hams" (Berthelot, A/ch. gras, I, xiii), an angel brings Isis a small vessel filled with transparent water, the arcanum. This is an obvious parallel to the krater of Hermes (Corpus Hermcticum, I) and of Zosimos (Berth clot, Ill, li, 8), which was filled with nous. In the q,vuLKa Kal/-,vuTLKa. of Pseudo-Democritus (Berthelot, 11, i, 63), the divine water is said to effect a transformation by bringing the "hidden nature" to the surface. And in the treatise of Comarius we find the miraculous waters that produce a new springtime (Berthelot, Traductians, p. 281). 
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divine hermaphrodite, the second Adam,72 the glorified, incorruptible body of resurrection,73 or the lumen luminum,74 the illumination of the human mind, or saPientia. As I have shown, together with Richard Wilhelm, Chinese alchemy produced the same idea, that the goal of the opus magnum is the creation of the "diamond body." 75 
All these parallels are an attempt to put my psychological observations into their historical setting. Without the historical connection they would remain suspended in mid air, a mere curiosity, although one could find numerous other modern parallels to the dreams described here. For instance, there is the following dream of a young woman. The initial dream was mainly concerned with the memory of an actual experience, a baptizing ceremony in a Protestant sect that took place under particularly grotesque and even repulsive conditions. The associations "were a precipitate of all the dreamer's disappointments ,,-ith religion. But the dream that came immediately after showed her a picture which she did not understand and could not relate to the previous dream. One could have aided her understanding by the simple device of prefacing her second dream with the words "on the contrary." This was the dream: 
She was in a fJlanetarium, a very impressive place overhung by the vault of the sky. In the sky two stars were shining; a white one, which was j\f ercury, but the other star emitted warm red 7~ Gnosius (in Hennetis Trismegisti Tractatus vere Aureus, cum Scholiis Dominici GlIosii, 16,0, pp. 44 and 101) speaks of "Hermaphroditus noster Adamicus" when treating of the quaternity in the circle. The centre is the "mediator making peace between enemies." obviously a uniting symbol (cf. Psychological Types, 1923 edn., pp. 234ff. and Def. 5 I). [Further developed in A ion, pp. I 94ff.-EIlITORS.] The hermaphrodite is born of the "self-impregnating dragon" (Art. aurif·, I. p. 3(3), who is none other than Mercurius, the anima mundi. (Maier, Symbola, p. 43: 
Rerthelot, 1, 87.) The uroboros is an hermaphroditic symbol. The hermaphrodite is also called the Rebis ("made of two"), frequently depicted in the form of an apotheosis (for instance in the Rosarium, in Art. aurif·, n, pp. 291 and 359: 
Reusner, Palldora, 1588, p. 253)· 
73 Aurora Consurgens (ecl. von Franz, p. 129) says, quoting Senior: "There is One thing that ne\Tr dieth, for it continueth by perpetual increase, when the body shall be glorified in the final resurrection of the dead .... Then saith the second .. \dam to the first and to his sons: Come ye blessed of my Father," ete. 
74 .\lphidills (12:h cen!.'): "Of them is born the modern light (lux moderna), to which no light is like in all the world." (Rosarium, in Art. aurif·, n, p. 2.18; "Tractatus aureus," Ars chem.) 
75 Jung and Willlelm, The Secret of the Golden Flower (1962), p. 69· 
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163 
164 
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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION 
waves of light and was unknown to her. She now saw that the walls underneath the vault were covered with frescoes. But she could recognize only one of them: it was an antique Picture of the tree-birth of Adonis. 
The "red waves of light" she took to be "warm feelings," i.e., love, and she now thought the star must have been Venus. She had once seen a picture of the tree-birth in a museum and had fancied that Adonis, as the dying and resurgent god, must also be a god of rebirth. 
In the first dream, then, there was violent criticism of Church religion, followed in the second dream by the mandala vision of a world clock-which is what a planetarium is in the fullest sense. In the sky the divine pair stands united, he white, she red, thus reversing the famous alchemical pair, where he is red and she is white, whence she was called Beya (Arabic al baida, 'the 'White One'), and he was called "servus rubeus," the 'red slave,' although, as Gabricius (Arabic kibrit, 'sulphur'), he is her royal brother. The divine pair makes one think of Guillaume de Digulleville's Christian allegory. The allusion to the tree-birth of Adonis corresponds to those dreams of my patient which had to do with mysterious rites of creation and renewa1.76 
So in principle these two dreams largely repeat the thoughtprocesses of my patient, although having nothing in common with the latter except the spiritual malaise of our time. As I have already pointed out, the connection of spontaneous modern symbolism with ancient theories and beliefs is not established by direct or indirect tradition, nor even by a secret tradition as has sometimes been surmised, though there are no tenable proofs of this.77 The most careful inquiry has never revealed any possibility of my patients' being acquainted with the relevant literature or having any other information about such ideas. It seems that their unconscious worked along the same line of thought which has manifested itself time and again in the last two thousand years. Such a continuity can only exist if we assume a certain unconscious condition as an inherited a priori factor. By this I naturally do not mean the inheritance of ideas, which would be difficult if not impossible to prove. I 76 CL Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 164ff., 183ff. 
77 Waite, The Secret Tradition in Alchemy. 
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mppose, rather, the inherited quality to be something like the formal possibility of producing the same or similar ideas over and over again. I have called this possibility the "archetype." Accordingly, the archetype would be a structural quality or condition peculiar to a psyche that is some:tJ.ow connected with the brain.78 
In the light of these historical parallels the mandala symbolizes either the divine being hitherto hidden and dormant in the body and now extracted and revivified, or else the vessel or the room in which the transformation of man into a divine being takes place. I know such formulations are fatally reminiscent of the wildest metaphysical speculations. I am sorry if it sounds crazy, but this is exactly what the human psyche produces an~ always has produced. Any psychology which assumes it can do without these facts must exclude them artificially. I would call this a philosophical prejudice, inadmissible from the empirical point of view. I should perhaps emphasize that we do not establish any metaphysical truth with these formulations. It is merely a statement that the psyche functions in such a way. And it is a fact that my patient felt a great deal better after the vision of the mandala. If you understand the problem it solved for him, you can also understand why he had such a feeling of "sublime harmony." 
I would not hesitate for a moment to suppress all speculations about the possible consequences of an experience as abstruse and remote as the mandala, if this were feasible. But for me, unfortunately, this type of experience is neither abstruse nor remote. On the contrary, it is an almost daily occurrence in my profession. I know a fair number of people who have to take their experience seriously if they want to live at all. They can only choose between the devil and the deep blue sea. The devil is the mandala or something equivalent to it and the deep blue sea is their neurosis. The well-meaning rationalist will point out that I am casting out the devil with Beelzebub and replacing an honest neurosis by the swindle of a religious belief. As to the former charge, I have nothing to say in reply, being no metaphysical expert. But as to the latter one, I beg leave to point out that it is not a question of belief but of experience. Religious experience is absolute; it cannot be disputed. You can only say that 78 Cf. my "Psychological Factors Determining Human Behaviour." 
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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION 
you have never had such an experience, whereupon your opponent will reply: "Sorry, I have." And there your discussion will come to an end. No matter what the world thinks about religious experience, the one who has it possesses a great treasure, a thing that has become for him a source of life, meaning, and beauty, and that has given a new splendour to the world and to mankind. He has pistis and peace. Where is the criterion by which you could say that such a life is not legitimate, that such an experience is not valid, and that such pistis is mere illusion? Is there, as a matter of fact, any better truth about the ultimate things than the one that helps you to live? That is the reason why I take careful account-religio!-of the symbols produced by the unconscious. They are the one thing that is capable of convincing the critical mind of modern man. And they are convincing for a very old-fashioned reason: They are overwhelming) 'which is precisely what the Latin word convincere means. The thing that cures a neurosis must be as convincing as the neurosis, and since the latter is only too real, the hel pful experience must be equally real. It must be a very real illusion, if you want to put it pessimistically. But what is the difference between a real illusion and a healing religious experience? It is merely a difference of words. You can say, for instance, that life is a disease with a very bad prognosis: it lingers on for years, only to end with death; or that normality is a general constitutional defect; or that man is an animal with a fatally overgrown brain. This kind of thinking is the prerogative of habitual grumblers with bad digestions. No one can know what the ultimate things are. We must therefore take them as we experience them. And if such experience helps to make life healthier, more beautiful, more complete and more satisfactory to yourself and to those you love, you may safely say: "This was the grace of God." 
	168 	No transcendental truth is thereby demonstrated, and we 
must confess in all humility that religious experience is ex tra ecclesiam) subjective, and liable to boundless error. Yet, if the spiritual adventure of our time is the exposure of human consciousness to the undefined and indefinable, there would seem to be good reasons for thinking that even the Boundless is pervaded by psychic laws, which no man invented, but of which he has "gnosis" in the symbolism of Christian dogma. Only heedless fools will wish to destroy this; the lover of the soul, never. 
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11 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE DOGMA OF THE TRINITY 
Noli foras ire, in teiPsum redi; 
in interiore homine habitat veritas. 
(Go not outside, return into thyself: 
Truth dwells in the inward man.) 
-St. Augustine, 
Liber de vera religione, xxix (72) 

~ 

	
	
INTRODUCTION 
	169 	The present study grew up out of a lecture I gave at the 
Eranos meeting in 1940, under the title "On the Psychology of the Idea of the Trinity." The lecture, though subsequently published,l was no more than a sketch, and it was clear to me from the beginning that it needed improving. Hence I felt under a kind of moral obligation to return to this theme in order to treat it in a manner befitting its dignity and importance. 
	170 	From the reactions the lecture provoked, it was plain that 
some of my readers found a psychological discussion of Christian symbols objectionable even when it carefully avoided any infringement of their religious value. Presumably my critics would have found less to object to had the same psychological treatment been accorded to Buddhist symbols, whose sacredness is just as indubitable. Yet, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I have to ask myself also, in all seriousness, whether it might not be far more dangerous if Christian symbols were made inaccessible to thoughtful understanding by being banished to a sphere of sacrosanct unintelligibility. They can easily become so remote from us that their irrationality turns 
1 "Zur Psychologie der Trinitlitsidee," Eranos-Jahrbuch I94Q-4I (Zurich, 1942). [Later revised and expanded as "Versuch zu einer psychologischen Deutung des Trinitlitsdogmas," Symbolik des Geistes (Zurich, 1948), pp. 321-446, from which version the present translation is made.-EDIToRS.] 
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into preposterous nonsense. Faith is a charisma not granted to all; instead, man has the gift of thought, which can strive after the highest things. The timid defensiveness certain modems display when it comes to thinking about symbols was certainly not shared by St. Paul or by many of the venerable Church Fathers.2 This timidity and anxiety about Christian symbols is not a good sign. If these symbols stand for a higher truth-which, presumably, my critics do not doubt-then science can only make a fool of itself if it proceeds incautiously in its efforts to understand them. Besides, it has never been my intention to invalidate the meaning of symbols; I concern myself with them precisely because I am convinced of their psychological validity. People who merely believe and don't think always forget that they continually expose themselves to their own worst enemy: dou bt. \Vherever belief reigns, doubt lurks in the background. But thinking people welcome doubt: it serves them as a valuable stepping-stone to better knowledge. People who can believe should be a little more tolerant with those of their fellows who are only capable of thinking. Belief has already conquered the summit which thinking tries to win by toilsome climbing. The believer ought not to project his habitual enemy, doubt, upon the thinker, thereby suspecting him of destructive designs. If the ancients had not done a bit of thinking we would not possess any dogma about the Trinity at all. The fact that a dogma is on the one hand believed and on the other hand is an object of thought is proof of its vitality. Therefore let the believer rejoice that others, too, seek to climb the mountain on whose peak he sits. 
	171 	My attempt to make the most sacred of all dogmatic symbols, 
the Trinity, an object of psychological study is an undertaking of whose audacity I am very well aware. Not having any theological knowledge worth mentioning, I must rely in this respect on the texts available to every layman. But since I have no intention of involving myself in the metaphysics of the Trinity, I am free to accept the Church's own formulation of the dogma, without having to enter into all the complicated metaphysical speculations that have gathered round it in the course of history. For the purposes of psychological discussion the elaborate ver2 Of the older ones I refer chiefly to Clement of Alexandria (d. c. 216), Origen (d. 253), and Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite (d. end of 5th cent.). 
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A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 
sion contained in the Athanasian Creed would be sufficient, as this shows very clearly what Church doctrine understands by the Trinity. Nevertheless, a certain amount of historical explanation has proved unavoidable for the sake of psychological understanding. My chief object, however, is to give a detailed exposition of those psychological views which seem to me necessary if we are to understand the dogma as a symbol in the psychological sense. Yet my purpose would be radically misunderstood if it were conceived as an attempt to "psychologize" the dogma. Symbols that have an archetypal foundation can never be reduced to anything else, as must be obvious to anybody who possesses the slightest knowledge of my writings. To many people it may seem strange that a doctor with a scientific training should interest himself in the Trinity at all. But anyone who has experienced how closely and meaningfully these representations collectives are bound up with the weal and woe of the human soul will readily understand that the central symbol of Christianity must have, above all else, a psychological meaning, for without this it could never have acquired any universal meaning whatever, but would have been relegated long ago to the dusty cabinet of spiritual monstrosities and shared the fate of the many-armed and many-headed gods of India and Greece. But since the dogma stands in a relationship of living reciprocity to the psyche, whence it originated in the first place, it expresses many of the things I am endeavouring to say over again, even though with the uncomfortable feeling that there is much in my exposition that still needs improvement. 
III 

1. PRE-CHRISTIAN PARALLELS 
I. BABYLONIA 
	172 	In proposing to approach this central symbol of Christianity, 
the Trinity, from the psychological point of view, I realize that I am trespassing on territory that must seem very far removed from psychology. Everything to do with religion, everything it is and asserts, touches the human soul so closely that psychology least of all can afford to overlook it. A conception like the Trinity pertains so much to the realm of theology that the only one of the profane sciences to pay any attention to it nowadays is history. Indeed, most people have ceased even to think about dogma, especially about a concept as hard to visualize as the Trinity. Even among professing Christians there are very few who think seriously about the Trinity as a matter of dogma and would consider it a possible subject for reflection-not to mention the educated public. A recent exception is Georg Koepgen's very important book, Die Gnosis des Christentums/ which, unfortunately, soon found its way onto the Index despite the episcopal "Placet." For all those who are seriously concerned to understand dogmatic ideas, this book of Koepgen's is a perfect example of thinking which has fallen under the spell of trinitarian symbolism. 
1 Salzburg, 1939. 
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A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 
	173 	Triads of gods appear very early, at a primitive level. The 
archaic triads in the religions of antiquity and of the East are too numerous to be mentioned here. Arrangement in triads is an archetype in the history of religion, which in all probability formed the basis of the Christian Trinity. Often these triads do not consist of three different deities independent of one another; instead, there is a distinct tendency for certain family relationships to arise within the triads. I would mention as an example the Babylonian triads, of which the most important is Anu, Bel, and Ea. Ea, personifying knowledge, is the father of Bel ("Lord"), who personifies practical activity.2 A secondary, rather later triad is the one made up of Sin (moon), Shamash (sun), and Adad (storm). Here Adad is the son of the supreme god, Anu.3 Under Nebuchadnezzar, Adad was the "Lord of heaven and earth." This suggestion of a father-son relationship comes out more clearly at the time of Hammurabi: Marduk, the son of Ea, was entrusted with Bel's power and thrust him into the background.4 Ea was a "loving, proud father, who willingly transferred his power and rights to his son." 5 Marduk was originally a sun-god, with the cognomen "Lord" (Bel); 6 he was the mediator between his father Ea and mankind. Ea declared that he knew nothing that his son did not know.7 Marduk, as his fight with Tiamat shows, is a redeemer. He is "the compassionate one, who Ions to awaken the dead"; the "Greateared," who hears the pleadings of men. He is a helper and healer, a true saviour. This teaching about a redeemer flourished on Babylonian soil all through the Christian era and goes on living today in the religion of the Mandaeans (who still exist in Mesopotamia), especially in their redeemer figure Manda d' Hayya or Hibil Ziwa.8 Among the Mandaeans he appears also as a light-bringer and at the same time as a world-creator.9 Just as, in the Babylonian epic, Marduk fashions the universe out of Tiamat, so Mani, the Original Man, makes heaven and earth from the skin, bones, and excrement of the children of darkness.10 "The all-round influence which the myth of Marduk 
2 Jastrow, Die Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens, I, p. 61. 
	3 Ibid., pp. 102, 143f. 	4 P. 112. 	5 P. 130. 	6 P. 1 I:l. 
7P.130.Cf.John 16: 15. 
8 Jeremias, The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East, I, p. 137. 
	9 Cf. John 1: 3. 	10 Kessler, Mani, pp. 267ft 
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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
had on the religious ideas of the Israelites is surprising." 11 
	174 	It appears that Hammurabi worshipped only a dyad, Anu 
and Bel; but, as a divine ruler himself, he associated himself with them as the "proclaimer of Anu and Bel," 12 and this at a time when the worship of Marduk was nearing its height. Hammurabi felt himself the god of a new aeon 13-the aeon of Aries, which was then beginning-and the suspicion is probably justified that tacit recognition was given to the triad Anu-BelHammurabi.14 
	'75 	The fact that there is a secondary triad, Sin-Shamash-Ishtar, 
is indicative of another intra-triadic relationship. Ishtar 15 appears here in the place of Adad, the storm god. She is the mother of the gods, and at the same time the daughter 16 of Anu as well as of Sin. 
	176 	Invocation of the ancient triads soon takes on a purely 
formal character. The triads prove to be "more a theological tenet than a living force." 17 They represent, in fact, the earliest beginnings of theology. Anu is the Lord of heaven, Bel is the Lord of the lower realm, earth, and Ea too is the god of an "underworld," but in his case it is the watery deep.18 The knowledge that Ea personifies comes from the "depths of the waters." According to one Babylonian legend, Ea created Uddushunamir, a creature of light, who was the messenger of the gods on Ishtar's journey to hell. The name means: "His light (or rising) shines." 19 Jeremias connects him with Gilgamesh, the hero who was more than half a god.20 The messenger of the gods was usually called Girru (Sumerian "Gibil"), the god of fire. As such he has an ethical aspect, for with his purifying fire he destroys evil. He too is a son of Ea, but on the other hand he is also described as a son of Anu. In this connection it is worth mentioning that Marduk as well has a dual nature, since in one 
11 Roscher, Lexikon, n, 2, cols. 2371f., s.v. "Marduk." 
	12 Jastrow, p 139. Cf. John I: 18. 	13 Cf. the Christian fish·symbol. 
14 "Anu and Bel called me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, the worshipper of the Gods, to go forth like the sun ... to enlighten the land." Harper, The Code of Hammurabi, p. 3. 
15 Cf. the invocation of the Holy Ghost as "Mother" in the Acts of Thomas (lames, The ApocrYPhal New Testament, p. 376). Also the feminine nature of Sophia, who frequently represents the Holy Ghost. 
16 Cf. Mary as creature and as 8.oroKos. 
	17 Jastrow, p. 141. 	18 P. 61. 	19 P. I~~. 	20 Jeremias, I, pp. 24711. 
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A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 
hymn he is called Mar Mummi, 'son of chaos.' In the same hymn his consort Sarpanitll is invoked along with Ea's wife, the ~other of l\farduk, as the "Silver-shining One." This is probably a reference to Venus, the femina alha. In alchemy the albedo changes into the moon, which, in Babylonia, was still masculine.21 Marduk's companions were four dogs.22 Here the number four may signify totality, just as it does in the case of the four sons of Horus, the four seraphim in the vision of Ezekiel, and the four symbols of the evangelists, consisting of three animals and one angel. 
11. EGYPT 
	177 	The ideas which are present only as intimations in Babylo- 
nian tradition are developed to full clarity in Egypt. I shall pass lightly over this subject here, as I have dealt with the Egyptian prefigurations of the Trinity at greater length elsewhere, in an as yet unfinished study of the symbolical bases of alchemy. 1 I shall only emphasize that Egyptian theology asserts, first and foremost, the essential unity (homoousia) of God as father and son, both represented by the king.2 The third person appears in the form of Ka-mutef ("the bull of his mother"), who is none other than the ka) the procreative power of the deity. In it and through it father and son are combined not in a triad but in a triunity. To the extent that Ka-mutef is a special manifestation of the divine ka) we can "actually speak of a triunity of God, king, and ka) in the sense that God is the father, the king is the son, and ka the connecting-link between them." 3 In his concluding chapter Jacobsohn draws a parallel between this Egyptian idea and the Christian credo. Apropos the passage "qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria virgine," he 
21 Cf. Mary's connections with the moon in Rahner, Griechische My then in christlicher Deutung, pp. 200ft., and "Mysterium Lunae," p. 80. 
22 A possible reference to the realm of the dead on the one hand and to Nimrod the mighty hunter on the other. See Roscher, Lexikon, n, cols. 2371f., s.v. "Marduk." 
1 [Mysterium Coniunctionis, ch. IV, 1-3.] 
2 )acobsohn, "Die dogmatische Stellung des Konigs in der Theologie der alten Aegypter," p. 17. 
3 Ibid., p. 58. 
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PSYCHOLOGY Al'>D RELIGION : WEST 
cites Karl Barth's formulation: "There is indeed a unity of God and man; God himself creates it. ... It is no other unity than his own eternal unity as father and son. This unity is the Holy Ghost." 4 As procreator the Holy Ghost would correspond to Ka-mutef, who connotes and guarantees the unity of father and son. In this connection ]acobsohn cites Barth's comment on Luke 1: 35 ("The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God"): "When the Bible speaks of the Holy Ghost, it is speaking of God as the combination of father and son, of the vinculum caritatis." 5 The divine procreation of Pharaoh takes place through Ka-mutef, in the human mother of the king. But, like Mary, she remains outside the Trinity. As Preisigke points out, the early Christian Egyptians simply transferred their traditional ideas about the ka to the Holy Ghost.6 This explains the curious fact that in the Coptic version of Pistis SofJhia, dating from the third century, Jesus has the Holy Ghost as his double, just like a proper ka.7 The Egyptian mythologem of the unity of substance of father and son, and of procreation in the king's mother, lasted until the Vth dynasty (about 2500 B.C.). Speaking of the birth of the divine boy in whom Horus manifests himself, God the Father says: "He will exercise a kingship of grace in this land, for my soul is in him," and to the child he says: "You are the son of my body, begotten by me." 8 "The sun he bears within him from his father's seed rises anew in him." His eyes are the sun and moon, the eyes of Horus.9 "\-Ve know that the passage in Luke 1: 78f.: "Through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death," refers to Malachi 4: 2: "But unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings." Who does not think here of the winged sun-disc of Egypt? 
	4 P. 64. Barth, Credo, p. 70. 	5 Barth, Bibelstunden uber Luk I, p. 26. 
6 Preisigke, Die Gotteskraft der fruhchristlichen Zeit;also Vom gottlichen Fluidum nach iigyptischer Anschauung. 
7 Pistis SoPhia (trans. by Mead), p. 118. 
8 Cf. Hebrews 1: 5: "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee." 9 A. Moret, "Du caracthe religieux de la royaute pharaonique." 
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A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 
	178 	These ideas 10 passed over into Hellenistic syncretism and 
were transmitted to Christianity through Philo and Plutarch,11 So it is not true, as is sometimes asserted even by modern theologians, that Egypt had little if any influence on the formation of Christian ideas. Quite the contrary. It is, indeed, highly improbable that only Babylonian ideas should have penetrated into Palestine, considering that this small buffer state had long been under Egyptian hegemony and had, moreover, the closest cultural ties with its powerful neighbour, especially after a flourishing Jewish colony established itself in Alexandria, several centuries before the birth of Christ. It is difficult to understand what could have induced Protestant theologians, whenever possible, to make it appear that the world of Christian ideas dropped straight out of heaven. The Catholic Church is liberal enough to look upon the Osiris-Horus-Isis myth, or at any rate suitable portions of it, as a prefiguration of the Christian legend of salvation. The numinous power of a mythologem and its value as truth are considerably enhanced if its archetypal character can be proved. The archetype is "that which is believed always, everywhere, and by everybody," and if it is not recognized consciously, then it appears from behind in its "wrathful" form, as the dark "son of chaos," the evil-doer, as Antichrist instead of Saviour-a fact which is all too clearly demonstrated by contemporary history. 
Ill. GREECE 
	179 	In enumerating the pre-Christian sources of the Trinity con- 
cept, we should not omit the mathematical speculations of the Greek philosophers. As we know, the philosophizing temper of the Greek mind is discernible even in St. John's gospel, a "'ork that is, very obviously, of Gnostic inspiration. Later, at the time of the Greek Fathers, this spirit begins to amplify the archetypal content of the Revelation, interpreting it in Gnostic terms, Pythagoras and his school probably had the most to do with the moulding of Greek thought, and as one aspect of the Trinity is based on number symbolism, it would be worth our while to 
10 Further material concerning pagan sources in Nielsen, Der dreieinige Gatt, I. 
11 Cf. Norden, Die Geburt des Kindes, pp. nff, 
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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
examine the Pythagorean system of numbers and see what it has to say about the three basic numbers with which we are concerned here. Zeller 1 says: "One is the first from which all other numbers arise, and in which the opposite qualities of numbers, the odd and the even, must therefore be united; two is the first even number; three the first that is uneven and perfect, because in it we first find beginning, middle, and end." 2 The views of the Pythagoreans influenced Plato, as is evident from his Timaeus; and, as this had an incalculable influence on the philosophical speculations of posterity, we shall have to go rather deeply into the psychology of number speculation. 
	180 	The number one claims an exceptional position, which we 
meet again in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages. According to this, one is not a number at all; the first number is two.3 Two is the first number because, with it, separation and multiplication begin, which alone make counting possible. With the appearance of the number two, another appears alongside the one, a happening which is so striking that in many languages "the other" and "the second" are expressed by the same word. Also associated with the number two is the idea of right and left,4 and remarkably enough, of favourable and unfavourable, good and bad. The "other" can have a "sinister" significanceor one feels it, at least, as something opposite and alien. Therefore, argues a medieval alchemist, God did not praise the second day of creation, because on this day (Monday, the day of the moon) the binarius, alias the devil,5 came into existence. Two implies a one which is different and distinct from the "numberless" One. In other words, as soon as the number two appears, a unit is produced out of the original unity, and this unit is none other than that same unity split into two and turned into a "number." The "One" and the "Other" form an opposition, but there is no opposition between one and two, for these are simple numbers which are distinguished only by their arithmetical 
1 A History of Greek Philosophy, I, p. 429. 
2 Authority for the latter remark in Aristotle, De coelo, I, i, 268a. 
3 The source for this appears to be Macrobius, Commentarius in Somnium SciPionis, I, 6, 8. 
4 CL "the movement of the Different to the left" in the Timaeus 36C (trans. by Co rn ford , p. 73). 
5 CL the etymological relations between G. zwei, 'two.' and Zweifier, 'doubter.' [In Eng., cf. duplicity, double-dealer, double-cross, two-faced.- TRANS.] 
118 

181 

A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 
value and by nothing else. The "One," however, seeks to hold to its one-and-alone existence, while the "Other" evel strives to be another opposed to the One. The One will not let go of the Other because, if it did, it would lose its character; and the Other pushes itself away from the One in order to exist at all. Thus there arises a tension of opposites between the One and the Other. But every tension of opposites culminates in a release, out of which comes the "third." In the third, the tension is resolved and the lost unity is restored. Unity, the absolute One, cannot be numbered, it is indefinable and unknowable; only when it appears as a unit, the number one, is it knowable, for the "Other" which is required for this act of knowing is lacking in the condition of the One. Three is an unfolding of the One to a condition where it can be known-unity become recognizable; had it not been resolved into the polarity of the One and the Other, it would have remained fixed in a condition devoid of every quality. Three therefore appears as a suitable synonym for a process of development in time, and thus forms a parallel to the self-revelation of the Deity as the absolute One unfolded into Three. The relation of Threeness to Oneness can be expressed by an equilateral triangle,6 A = B = C, that is, by the identity of the three, threeness being contained in its entirety in each of the three angles. This intellectual idea of the equilateral triangle is a conceptual model for the logical image of the Trinity. 
In addition to the Pythagorean interpretation of numbers, "\-ve have to consider, as a more direct source of trinitarian ideas in Greek philosophy, the mystery-laden Timaeus of Plato. I shall quote, first of all, the classical argument in sections 31 B32A: 
Hence the god, when he began to put together the body of the universe, set about making it of fire and earth. But two things alone cannot be satisfactorily united without a third; for there must be some bond between them drawing them together. And of all bonds the best is that which makes itself and the terms it connects a unity in the fullest sense; and it is of the nature of a continued geometrical proportion to effect this most perfectly. For whenever, of three numbers, the middle one between any two that are either solids or planes 
6 I-Iarnack (Dogmengeschichte, 11, p. 303) compares the scholastic conception of the Trinity to an equilateral triangle. 
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182 

PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
[i.e., cubes or squares] is such that, as the first is to it, so is it to the last, and conversely as the last is to the middle, so is the middle to the first, then since the middle becomes first and last, and again the last and first become middle, in that way all wiII necessarily come to play the same part towards one another, and by so doing they 
wiII all make a unity.7 
In a geometrical progression, the quotient (q) of a series of terms remains the same, e.g.: 2: 1 = 4: 2 = 8: 4 = 2, or, algebraically expressed: a) aq) aq2. The proportion is therefore as follows: 2 is to 4 as 4 is to 8, or a is to aq as aq is to aq2. 
This argument is now followed by a reflection which has farreaching psychological implications: if a simple pair of opposites, say fire and earth, are bound together by a mean (/J.ECTOV), and if this bond is a geometrical proportion, then one mean can only connect plane figures, since two means are required to connect 
solids: 
Now if it had been required that the body of the universe should be a plane surface with no depth, a single mean would have been enough to connect its companions and itself; but in fact the world was to be solid in form, and solids are always conjoined, not by one mean, but by two.8 
Accordingly, the two-dimensional connection is not yet a physical reality, for a plane without extension in the third dimension is only an abstract thought. If it is to become a physical reality, three dimensions and therefore two means are required. Sir Thomas Heath 9 puts the problem in the following algebraic 
formulae: 
Union in two dimensions of earth (P2) and fire (q2): p2 : pq = pq : q2 
Obviously the mean is pq. 
Physical union of earth and fire, represented by p3 and q3 
respectively: 
p3 : p2q = p2q : pq2 = pq2 : q3 
The two means are p2q and pq2, corresponding to the physical 
elements water and air. 
	7 Trans. by Corn ford, p. 44. 	8 Ibid .. p. 44· 
9 A History of Greek Mathematics, I, p. 89; Cornford. p. 47· 120 

A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY Accordingly, the god set water and air between fire and earth, and made them, so far as was possible, proportional to one another, so that as fire is to air, so is air to water, and as air is to water, so is water to earth, and thus he bound together the frame of a world visible and tangible. For these reasons and from such constituents, four in number, the body of the universe was brought into being, coming into concord by means of proportion, and from these it acquired Amity, so that united with itself it became indissoluble by any other power save him who bound it together,lo 
	183 	The union of one pair of opposites only produces a two- 
dimensional triad: p2 + pq + q2. This, being a plane figure, is not a reality but a thought. Hence two pairs of opposites, making a quaternio (P3 + p2q + pq2 + q3), are needed to represent physical reality. Here we meet, at any rate in veiled form, the dilemma of three and four alluded to in the opening words of the Timaeus. Goethe intuitively grasped the significance of this allusion when he says of the fourth Cabir in Faust: "He was the right one I Who thought for them all," and that "You might ask on Olympus" about the eighth "whom nobody thought of." 11 
	184 	It is interesting to note that Plato begins by representing the 
union of opposites two-dimensionally, as an intellectual problem to be solved by thinking, but then comes to see that its solution does not add up to reality. In the former case we have to do with a self-subsistent triad, and in the latter with a quaternity. This was the dilemma that perplexed the alchemists for more than a thousand years, and, as the "axiom of Maria Prophetissa" (the Jewess or Copt), it appears in modern dreams,12 and is also found in psychology as the opposition between the functions of consciousness, three of which are fairly well differentiated, while the fourth, undifferentiated, "inferior" function is undomesticated, unadapted, uncontrolled, and primitive. Because of its contamination with the collective unconscious, it possesses archaic and mystical qualities, and is the complete opposite of the most differentiated function. For instance, if the most differentiated is thinking, or the intellect, then the inferior,13 fourth 
10 Cornford, pp. 44-45. slightly modified. 
11 For a detailed account see Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 204ft 12 As the dream in Psychology and Alchemy, par. 200, shows. 
18 Judging, of course, from the standpoint of the most differentiated function. 121 

PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : 'VEST 
function 14 will be feeling. Hence the opening words of the Timaeus-"One, two, three-but where, my dear Timaeus, is the fourth ... ?" -fall familiarly upon the ears of the psychologist and alchemist, and for him as for Goethe there can be no doubt that Plato is alluding to something of mysterious import. We can now see that it was nothing less than the dilemma as to whether something we think about is a mere thought or a reality, or at least capable of becoming rea1. And this, for any philosopher who is not just an empty babbler, is a problem of the first order and no whit less important than the moral problems inseparably connected with it. In this matter Plato knew from personal experience how difficult is the step from two-dimensional thinking to its realization in three-dimensional fact.15 Already with his friend Dionysius the Elder, tyrant of Syracuse, he had so many disagreements that the philosopher-politician contrived to sell him as a slave, from which fate he was preserved only because he had the good fortune to be ransomed by friends. His attempts to realize his political theories under Dionysius the Younger also ended in failure, and from then on Plato abandoned politics for good. Metaphysics seemed to him to offer more prospects than this ungovernable world. So, for him personally, the main emphasis lay on the two-dimensional world of thought; and this is especially true of the Timaeus) which was written after his political disappointments. It is generally reckoned as belonging to Plato's late works. 
	185 	In these circumstances the opening words, not being attrib- 
utable either to the jocosity of the author or to pure chance, take on a rather mournful significance: one of the four is absent because he is "unwel1." If we regard the introductory scene as symbolical, this means that of the four elements out of which reality is composed, either air or water is missing. If air is missing, then there is no connecting link with spirit (fire), and if water is missing, there is no link with concrete reality (earth). Plato certainly did not lack spirit; the missing element he so much desired was the concrete realization of ideas. He had to 
14 Cf. Psychological Types, Def. 30. 
15 "The world is narrow and the brain is wide; Thoughts in the head dwell lightly side by side, Yet things in space nm counter and fall fou!''' -Schiller, Wallensteins Tod, n, 2. 
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A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 
content himself with the harmony of airy thought-structures that lacked weight, and with a paper surface that lacked depth. The step from three to four brought him sharply up against something unexpected and alien to his thought, something heavy, inert, and limited, which no "f.l7J QV" 16 and no "privatio boni" can conjure away or diminish. Even God's fairest creation is corrupted by it, and idleness, stupidity, malice, discontent, sickness, old age and death fill the glorious body of the "blessed god." Truly a grievous spectacle, this sick world-soul, and unfortunately not at all as Plato's inner eye envisaged it when he wrote: 
All this, then, was the plan of the everlasting god for the god who was going to be. According to this plan he made the body of the world smooth and uniform, everywhere equidistant from its centre, a body whole and complete, with complete bodies for its parts. And in the centre he set the soul and caused it to extend throughout the whole body, and he further "Tz'jJped the body round with soul on the outside. So he established one world alone, round and revolving in a circle, solitary but able by reason of its excellence to bear itself corn· pany, needing no other acquaintance or friend but sufficient unto itself. On all these accounts the world which he brought into being was a blessed god.17 
	186 	This world, created by a god, is itself a god, a son of the self- 
manifesting father. Further, the demiurge furnished it with a soul "'hieh is "prior" to the body (34B). The world-soul was fashioned by the demiurge as follows: he made a mixture of the indivisible (CIWP~5) and the divisible (f.lfPWTOV), thus producing a third form of existence. This third form had a nature independent of the "Same" (TO aUrov) and the "Different" (TO fTfPOV). At first sight the "Same" seems to coincide with the indivisible and the "Different" with the divisible.1s The text says: 19 "From 
	16 "Not being." 	17 Corn ford, p. 58, slightly modiflCd. 
IS Theodor Comperz (Greek Thinkers, Ill, p. 215) mentions two primary substances which are designated as follows in Plato's Philebus: limit, unlimited; the same, the other; the divisible, the indivisible. He adds that Plato's pupils would have spoken of "unity" and of "the great and the small" or of "duality." From this it is clear that Gomperz regards the "Same" and the "indidsible" as synonymous, thus overlooking the resistance of the "Other," and the fundamentally fourfold nature of the world soul. (See below.) 
19 [The version here given is translated from the German text of Otto Apelt (plato: Timaios und K,·itias, p. 52) cited by the author.-TRA'ls.] 
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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 

the indivisible and ever the same substance [Cornford's "Sameness"], and that which is physically divisible, he mixed an intermediate, third form of existence which had its own being beside the Same and the Different, and this form he fashioned accordingly [K(tTCt TavTct] as a mean between the indivisible and the physically divisible. Then taking these three existences, he mixed them again, forcing the nature of the Different, though it resisted the mixture, into union with the Same. Thus, with the admixture of being (ovCTLa), the three became one." 20 
	187 	The world-soul, representing the governing principle of the 
whole physical world, therefore possesses a triune nature. And since, for Plato, the world is a OEVTEPOS (Ms (second god), the world-soul is a revelation or unfolding of the God-image.21 
	188 	Plato's account of the actual process of creation is very curi- 
ous and calls for some elucidation. The first thing that strikes us is the twice-repeatedCTVllEKEpctCTaTo('he mixed'). Why should the mixture be repeated, since it consists of three elements in the first place and contains no more than three at the end, and, in the second place, Same and Different appear to correspond with indivisible and divisible? Appearances, however, are deceptive. During the first mixture there is nothing to suggest that the divisible was recalcitrant and had to be forcibly united with the indivisible. In both mixtures it is rather a question of combining two separate pairs of opposites,22 which, because they 
are called upon to make a unity, may be thought of as arranged in a quaternio: 
Same 
Indivisible 
Divisible 
Different 
20 Tijs ap.Ep[UTOU Kat. aEl Kara. Taura. ~XOVU'T1S ovcrlas KaL r1}S all 1rEpl Tli uWJ.l.G.rG. 'YL'YJlO}.lEJl7]$ jJEpUT'rijs, rplroJl E~ Q.J.l4>oi.v EV jlfUCP UVJlEKEpaUaro ovcrlas EI~oS" r1js 'rE raurov cf>VCTEWS all ?rEPL Kat. Tijs TDU €'rfEPOU, Kat. Kant 'TO-ura. UVVEUT17UEV EV J.1.fU4} TOV rE aj.J.EpoVs avrwv Kal. TDU KaTei Ta uW)Jara }J.EPI.U'TOU· KO.' Tp[a Xa13wJI aura ovra UVJlEKEpaUaro Eis J.l.lav 7raVTa loeG.v, T~'" OaTEpov c/>V(TLV ovap,ELKTOV ovo-av Els ra.{JToJl ulJJlapjJ.oT'TWJI J3l~, /-LH')'JlVS oE P.ETa. rijs ovu£o. •. 
Cornford (pp. 59-60) translates as follows: "Between the indivisible Existence that is ever in the same state and the divisible Existence that becomes in bodies, he compounded a third form of Existence composed of both. Again. in the case of Sameness and in that of Difference, he also on the same principle made a compound intermediate between that kind of them which is indivisible and the kind that is divisible in bodies. Then, taking the three, he blended them all into a unity, forcing the nature of Difference, hard as it was to mingle. into union with Sameness, and mixing them together with Existence" (35A). 
21 Cf. Timaeus 37C, where the first God is described as the "father" and his creation as the copy of an original "pattern," which is himself (Cornford, p. 97)· 
124 
189 
Indivisible and divisible, together with their mean, form a simple triad which has "its own being" beside the Same and the Different. This triad corresponds to the condition of "thought" not yet become "reality." For this a second mixture is needed, in which the Different (i.e., the "Other") is incorporated by force. The "Other" is therefore the "fourth" element, whose nature it is to be the "adversary" and to resist harmony. But the fourth, as the text says, is intimately connected with Plato's desire for "being." One thinks, not unnaturally, of the impatience the philosopher must have felt when reality proved so intractable to his ideas. That reasonableness might, under certain circumstances, have to be imposed by force is a notion that must sometimes have crossed his mind. 
The passage as a whole, however, is far from simple. It can be translated in many ways and interpreted in many more. The critical point for us is CTVlIECTTT/CTElI Ev }.LECT4.J TOU TE ct}.LEPOUS, literally, 'he compounded (a form of the nature of sameness and difference) in the middle (Ell }.LECT4.J) of the indivisible (and the divisible).' Consequently the middle term of the second pair of opposites would coincide with the middle term of the first pair. The resultant figure is a quincunx, since the two pairs of opposites have a common mean or "third form" (TpLTOll doos): 
22 This seems borne out by the fact that the first pair of opposites is correlated with ovu£o. (being). and the second with "'vut< (nature). If one had to choose be· tween ovu£o. and "'vu£<, the latter would probably be considered the more concrete of the two. 

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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION 
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A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 
Different 
Same 
signified the world-soul for the Egyptians.25 It is, in fact, the hieroglyph for 'city.' 26 Perhaps Plato was trying, in this passage, to bring forth the mandala structure that later appeared as the capital of Atlantis in his Critias. 
	191 	The two mixtures could be regarded as a parallel to the two 
means of the physical elements. Corn ford, on the other hand, considers that Plato is referring to three intermedia, which he calls "Intermediate Existence," "Intermediate Sameness," "Intermediate Difference." 27 His main insistence is on the threefold procedure and not on the four substances. The Middle Ages were also familiar with the quatuor elementa (A B C D) and the tria regimina (three procedures) which united them as follows: AB, BC, CD. From this point of view, Cornford fails to catch Plato's subtle allusion to the recalcitrant fourth. 
	192 	We do not wish it to be supposed that the thought-processes 
we have deduced from the text of the Timaeus represent Plato's conscious reflections. However extraordinary his genius may have been, it by no means follows that his thoughts were all conscious ones. The problem of the fourth, for instance, which is an absolutely essential ingredient of totality, can hardly have reached his consciousness in complete form. If it had, he would have been repelled by the violence with which the elements were to be forced into a harmonious system. N or would he have been so illogical as to insist on the threefoldness of his world-soul. Again, I would not venture to assert that the opening words of the Timaeus are a conscious reference to the underlying problem of the recalcitrant fourth. Everything suggests that the same unconscious sPiritus rector was at work which twice impelled the master to try to write a tetralogy, the fourth part remaining unfinished on both occasions.28 This factor also ensured that Plato would remain a bachelor to the end of his life, as if affirming the masculinity of his triadic God-image. 
	25 Taylor, p. 75. 	~ 
26 Griffith, A Collection of Hieroglyphs, p. 34 B. Fig. 142: 'CIi1 = Plan of a village with cross-streets. 
27 P. 61. The intermedia are constructed on the assumption that Indivisible and Divisible are opposite attributes of each of the three principles. Existence. Sameness, Difference. I do not know whether the text permits of such an operation. 
28 Gomperz, Ill, p. 200 [The two unfinished tetralogies are (a) Republic, Timaeus, Critias (left incomplete), (Hermocrates, never written); (b) Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, (PhilosoPher, never written).- TRANs.] 
127 

Indivisible 
Divisible 

190 
I have placed the pairs of opposites side by side, instead of facing one another (as in the previous diagram), in order to illustrate their union in a single mean. Three elements are to be distinguished in our diagram: the two pairs of opposites and their common mean, and I understand the text as referring to these three elements when it says: "Then, taking these three existences .. ." Since the mean is called the "third form," each pair of opposites can presumably be taken as representing the first and second forms: Indivisible = first form, Divisible = second form, mean = third form, and so on. Their union in a quincunx signifies union of the four elements in a world-body. Thomas Taylor, who was strongly influenced by Proclus, says in his commentary to the Timaeus: "For those which are connected with her essence in a following order, proceed from her [the anima mundi] according to the power of the fourth term (4), which possesses generative powers; but return to her according to the fifth (9) which reduces them to one." 23 Further confirmation of the quaternary nature of the world-soul and world-body may be found in the passage where the demiurge splits this whole fabric lengthwise into two halves and joins them up again in the form ofaX .24 According to Porphyry, a X in a circle 23 Reprinted as Bollingen Series Ill, Plato: Timaeus and Critias, p. 71. 
24 Timaeus 36B (Corn ford, p. 73). 
11 
., 
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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
	193 	As history draws nearer to the beginning of our era, the gods 
become more and more abstract and spiritualized. Even Yahweh had to submit to this transformation. In the Alexandrian philosophy that arose in the last century B.C., we witness not only an alteration of his nature but an emergence of two other divinities in his immediate vicinity: the Logos and Sophia. Together with him they form a triad,29 and this is a clear prefiguration of the post-Christian Trinity. 
29 Leisegang, Pneuma Hagion, p. 86. 
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2. FATHER, SON, AND SPIRIT 
	194 	I have dwelt at some length on the views of the Babylo- 
nians and Egyptians, and on Platonist philosophy, in order to give the reader some conception of the trinitarian and unitarian ideas that were in existence many centuries before the birth of Christianity. Whether these ideas were handed down to posterity as a result of migration and tradition or whether they arose spontaneously in each case is a question of little importance. The important thing is that they occurred because, once having sprung forth from the unconscious of the human race (and not just in Asia Minor!), they could rearise anywhere at any time. It is, for instance, more than doubtful whether the Church Fathers who devised the homoousios formula were even remotely acquainted with the ancient Egyptian theology of kingship. Nevertheless, they neither paused in their labours nor rested until they had finally reconstructed the ancient Egyptian archetype. Much the same sort of thing happened when, in A.D. 431, at the Council of Ephesus, whose streets had once rung with hymns of praise to many-breasted Diana, the Virgin Mary was declared the (}EOT6KO~, 'birth-giver of the god.' 1 As we know from Epiphanius,2 there was even a sect, the Collyridians, 
1 Here one might recall the legend that, after the death of Christ, Mary be took herself with John to Ephesus, where she is said to have lived until her death. 
2 Panarium (Contra octoginta haereses) LXXIX. See Migne, P.G., vol. 41, cols. 739ff. 
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who worshipped Mary after the manner of an antique goddess. Her cult had its chief centres in Arabia, Thrace, and Upper Scythia, the most enthusiastic devotees being women. Their provocations moved Epiphanius to the rebuke that "the whole female sex is slippery and prone to error, with a mind that is very petty and narrow." 3 It is clear from this chastening sermon that there were priestesses who on certain feast days decorated a wagon or four-cornered seat and covered it with linen, on which they placed offerings of bakemeats "in the name of Mary" (fl~ oPo/-la T~~ Mapla~), afterwards partaking of the sacrificial meal. This plainly amounted to a Eucharistic feast in honour of Mary, at which wheaten bread was eaten. The orthodox standpoint of the time is aptly expressed in the words of Epiphanius: "Let Mary be held in honour, and let the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost be adored, but let no one adore Mary." 
	195 	Thus the archetype reasserted itself, since, as I have tried to 
show, archetypal ideas are part of the indestructible foundations of the human mind. However long they are forgotten and buried, always they return, sometimes in the strangest guise, with a personal twist to them or intellectually distorted, as in the case of the Arian heresy, but continually reproducing themselves in new forms representing the timeless truths that are innate in man's nature.4 
	196 	Even though Plato's influence on the thinkers of the next 
few centuries can hardly be overestimated, his philosophically formulated triad cannot be held responsible for the origins of the Christian dogma of the Trinity. For we are concerned here not with any philosophical, that is conscious, assumptions but with unconscious, archetypal forms. The Platonic formula for the triad contradicts the Christian Trinity in one essential point: the triad is built on opposition, whereas the Trinity contains no opposition of any kind, but is, on the contrary, a complete harmony in itself. The three Persons are characterized in such a manner that they cannot possibly be derived from Pla- 
3 "Quod genus lubricum et in errorem proclive, ac pusilli admodum et angusti animi esse solet." 
4 The special emphasis I lay on archetypal predispositions does not mean that mythologems are of exclusively psychic origin. I am not overlooking the social conditions that are just as necessary for their production. 
13° 

A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 
tonic premises, while the terms Father, Son, and Ho}y Ghost do not proceed in any sense from the number three. At most, the Platonic formula supplies the intellectual scaffolding for contents that come from quite other sources. The Trinity may be conceived platonically as to its form, but for its content we have to rely on psychic factors, on irrational data that cannot be logically determined beforehand. In other words, we have to distinguish between the logical idea of the Trinity and its psychological reality. The latter brings us back to the very much more ancient Egyptian ideas and hence to the archetype, which provides the authentic and eternal justification for the existence of any trinitarian idea at all. 
	197 	The psychological datum consists of Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost. If we posit "Father," then "Son" logically follo'ws; but "Holy Ghost" does not follow logically from either "father" or "Son." So we must be dealing here with a special factor that rests on a different presupposition. According to the old doctrine, the Holy Ghost is "vera persona, quae a filio et patre missa est" (a real person who is sent by the Son and the Father). The "processio a patre filioque" (procession from the Father and the Son) is a "spiration" and not a "begetting." This somewhat peculiar idea corresponds to the separation, which still existed in the Middle Ages, of "corpus" and "spiramen," the latter being understood as something more than mere "breath." What it really denoted was the animaJ which, as its name shows, is a breath-being (anemos = wind). Although an activity of the body, it was thought of as an independent substance (or hypostasis) existing alongside the body. The underlying idea is that the body "lives," and that "life" is something superadded and autonomous, conceived as a soul unattached to the body. Applying this idea to the Trinity formula, we would have to say: Father, Son, and Life-the life proceeding from both or lived by both. The Holy Ghost as "life" is a concept that cannot be derived logically from the identity of Father and Son, but is, rather, a psychological idea, a datum based on an irrational, primordial image. This primordial image is the archetype, and we find it expressed most clearly in the Egyptian theology of kingship. There, as we have seen, the archetype takes the form of God the father, Ka-mutef (the begetter), and the son. The ka is the lifespirit, the animating principle of men and gods, and therefore 
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can be legitimately interpreted as the soul or spiritual double. He is the "life" of the dead man, and thus corresponds on the one hand to the living man's soul, and on the other to his "spirit" or "genius." \-Ve have seen that Ka-mutef is a hypostatization of procreative power.5 In the same way, the Holy Ghost is hypostatized procreative power and life-force.6 Hence, in the Christian Trinity, we are confronted with a distinctly archaic idea, whose extraordinary value lies precisely in the fact that it is a supreme, hypostatic representation of an abstract thought (two-dimensional triad). The form is still concretistic, in that the archetype is represented by the relationship "Father" and "Son." Were it nothing but that, it would only be a dyad. The third element, however, the connecting link between "Father" and "Son," is spirit and not a human figure. The masculine father-son relationship is thus lifted out of the natural order (which includes mothers and daughters) and translated to a sphere from which the feminine element is excluded: in ancient Egypt as in Christianity the Theotokos stands outside the Trinity. One has only to think of Jesus's brusque rejection of his mother at the marriage in Cana: "\Voman, what have I to do with thee?" (John 2: 4), and also earlier, when she sought the twelve-year-old child in the temple: "How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" (Luke 2: 49). We shall probably not be wrong in assuming that this special sphere to which the father-son relationship is removed is the sphere of primitive mysteries and masculine initiations. Among certain tribes, women are forbidden to look at the mysteries on pain of death. Through the initiations the young men are systematically alienated from their mothers and are reborn as spirits. The celibacy of the priesthood is a continuation of this archetypal idea.7 
	198 	The intellectual operation that lies concealed in the higher 
father-son relationship consists in the extrapolation of an invisi~ The ka of the king even has an individual name. Thus "the living ka of the Lord of the Two Lands," Thutmosis Ill, was called the "victorious bull which shines in Thebes." Erman, Lite in Ancient Egypt, p. 307. 
6 The "doubling" of the spirit occurs also in the Old Testament, though more as a "potency" emanating from God than as an hypostasis. Nevertheless, Isaiah 48: 16 looks very like a hypostasis in the Septuagint text: KUPLOS KUPLOS a.7rEUTEL>"'V /.LE Ka! TO 7rVEU/.La aUTou (The Lord the Lord sent me and his spirit). 
7 For an instructive account of the Greek background see Harrison, Themis, ch. 1. 
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199 
200 

A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 
ble figure, a "spirit" that is the very essence of masculine life. The life of the body or of a man is posited as something different from the man himself. This led to the idea of a ka or immortal soul, able to detach itself from the body and not dependent on it for its existence. In this respect, primitives have extraordinarily well developed ideas about a plurality of souls. Some are immortal, others are only loosely attached to the body and can wander off and get lost in the night, or they lose their way and get caught in a dream. There are even souls that belong to a person without being lodged in his body, like the bush-soul, which dwells outside in the forest, in the body of an animal. The juxtaposition of a person and his "life" has its psychological basis in the fact that a mind which is not very well differentiated cannot think abstractly and is incapable of putting things into categories. It can only take the qualities it perceives and place them side by side: man and his life, or his sickness (visualized as a sort of demon), or his health or prestige (mana, etc.). This is obviously the case with the Egyptian ha. Father-son-life (or procreative power), together with rigorous exclusion of the Theotokos, constitute the patriarchal formula that was "in the air" long before the advent of Christianity. 
The Father is, by definition, the prime cause, the creator, the auctor rerum) who, on a level of culture where reflection is still unknown, can only be One. The Other follows from the One by splitting off from it. This split need not occur so long as there is no criticism of the auctor rerum-so long, that is to say, as a culture refrains from all reflection about the One and does not start criticizing the Creator's handiwork. A feeling of oneness, far removed from critical judgment and moral conflict, leaves the Father's authority unimpaired. 
I had occasion to observe this original oneness of the fatherworld when I was with a tribe of Negroes on Mount Elgon. These people professed to believe that the Creator had made everything good and beautiful. "But what about the bad animals that kill your cattle?" I asked. They replied: "The lion is good and beautiful." "And your horrible diseases?" "You lie in the sun, and it is beautiful." I was impressed by their optimism. But at six o'clock in the evening this philosophy came to a sudden stop, as I was soon to discover. After sunset, another world took over-the dark world of the Ayik, who is everything evil, 
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dangerous, and terrifying. The optimistic philosophy ends and a philosophy of fear, ghosts, and magical spells for averting the Evil One begins. Then, at sunrise, the optimism starts off again without any trace of inner contradiction. 
	201 	Here man, world, and God form a whoh!, a unity unclouded 
by criticism. It is the world of the Father, and of man in his childhood state. Despite the fact that twelve hours out of every twenty-four are spent in the world of darkness, and in agonizing belief in this darkness, the doubt never arises as to whether God might not also be the Other. The famous question about the origin of evil does not yet exist in a patriarchal age. Only with the coming of Christianity did it present itself as the principal problem of morality. The world of the Father typifies an age which is characterized by a pristine oneness with the whole of Nature, no matter whether this oneness be beautiful or ugly or awe-inspiring. But once the question is asked: "\'\Thence comes the evil, why is the world so bad and imperfect, why are there diseases and other horrors, why must man suffer?" -then reflection has already begun to judge the Father by his manifest works, and straightway one is conscious of a doubt, which is itself the symptom of a split in the original unity. One comes to the conclusion that creation is imperfect-nay more, that the Creator has not done his job properly, that the goodness and almightiness of the Father cannot be the sole principle of the cosmos. Hence the One has to be supplemented by the Other, with the result that the world of the Father is fundamentally altered and is superseded by the world of the Son. 
	202 	This was the time when the Greeks started criticizing the 
world, the time of "gnosis" in its widest sense, which ultimately gave birth to Christianity. The archetype of the redeemer-god and Original Man is age-old-we simply do not know how old. The Son, the revealed god, who voluntarily or involuntarily offers himself for sacrifice as a man, in order to create the world or redeem it from evil, can be traced back to the Purusha of Indian philosophy, and is also found in the Persian conception of the Original Man, Gayomart. Gayomart, son of the god of light, falls victim to the darkness, from which he must be set free in order to redeem the world. He is the prototype of the Gnostic redeemer-figures and of the teachings concerning Christ, redeemer of mankind. 
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A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 
	203 	It is not hard to see that a critique which raised the question 
of the origin of evil and of suffering had in mind another world -a world filled with longing for redemption and for that state of perfection in which man was still one with the Father. Longingly he looked back to the world of the Father, but it was lost forever, because an irreversible increase in man's consciousness had taken place in the meantime and made it independent. \Vith this mutation he broke away from the world of the Father and entered upon the world of the Son, with its divine drama of redemption and the ritualistic retelling of those things which the God-man had accomplished during his earthly sojourn.8 The life of the God-man revealed things that could not possibly have been known at the time when the Father ruled as the One. For the Father, as the original unity, was not a defined or definable object; nor could he, strictly speaking, either be called the "Father" or be one. He only became a "Father" by incarnating in the Son, and by so doing became defined and definable. By becoming a father and a man he revealed to man the secret of his divinity. 
	2°4 	One of these revelations is the Holy Ghost. As a being who 
existed before the world was, he is eternal, but he appears empirically in this world only when Christ had left the earthly stage. He will be for the disciples what Christ was for them. He will invest them with the power to do works greater, perhaps, than those of the Son (John 14: 12). The Holy Ghost is a figure who deputizes for Christ and who corresponds to what Christ received from the Father. From the Father comes the Son, and common to both is the living activity of the Holy Ghost, who, according to Christian doctrine, is breathed forth ("spirated") by both. As he is the third term common to Father and Son, he puts an end to the duality, to the "doubt" in the Son. He is, in fact, the third element that rounds out the Three and restores the One. The point is that the unfolding of the One reaches its climax in the Holy Ghost after polarizing itself as Father and Son. Its descent into a human body is sufficient in itself to make it become another, to set it in opposition to itself. Thenceforward there are two: the "One" and the "Other," 
8 Cf. the detailed exposition of the death and rebirth of the divine KOUpO> in Rarrison, Themis. 
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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
which results in a certain tension.9 This tension works itself out in the suffering and fate of the Son 10 and, finally, in Christ's admission of abandonment by God (Matthew 27: 46). 
	205 	Although the Holy Ghost is the progenitor of the Son 
(Matthew I: 18), he is also, as the Paraclete, a legacy from him. He continues the work of redemption in mankind at large, by descending upon those who merit divine election. Consequently, the Paraclete is, at least by implication, the crowning figure in the work of redemption on the one hand and in God's revelation of himself on the other. It could, in fact, be said that the Holy Ghost represents the final, complete stage in the evolution of God and the divine drama. For the Trinity is undoubtedly a higher form of God-concept than mere unity, since it corresponds to a level of reflection on which man has become more conscIOUS. 
	206 	The trinitarian conception of a life-process within the Deity, 
which I have outlined here, was, as we have seen, already in existence in pre-Christian times, its essential features being a continuation and differentiation of the primitive rites of renewal and the cult-legends associated with them. Just as the gods of these mysteries become extinct, so, too, do the mysteries themselves, only to take on new forms in the course of history. A large-scale extinction of the old gods was once more in progress at the beginning of our era, and the birth of a new god, with new mysteries and new emotions, was an occurrence that healed the wound in men's souls. It goes without saying that any conscious borrowing from the existing mystery traditions would have hampered the god's renewal and rebirth. It had to be an entirely unprejudiced revelation which, quite unrelated to anything else, and if possible without preconceptions of any kind, would usher into the world a new OpW!J.EVOV and a new cultlegend. Only at a comparatively late date did people notice the striking parallels with the legend of Dionysus, which they then declared to be the work of the devil. This attitude on the part of the early Christians can easily be understood, for Christianity 
9 The relation of Father to Son is not arithmetical, since both the One and the Other are still united in the original Unity and are, so to speak, eternally on the point of becoming two. Hence the Son is eternally being begotten by the Father, and Christ's sacrificial death is an eternally present act. 
10 The 11"6.IJ'1 of Dionysus would be the Greek parallels. 
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A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 
did indeed develop in this unconscious fashion, and furthermore its seeming lack of antecedents proved to be the indispensable condition for its existence as an effective force. Nobody can doubt the manifold superiority of the Christian revelation over its pagan precursors, for which reason it is distinctly superfluous today to insist on the unheralded and uf!historical character of the gospels, seeing that they swarm with historical and psychological assumptions of very ancient origin. 
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3. THE SYMBOLA 
	207 	The trinitarian drama of redemption (as distinct from the 
intellectual conception of it) burst upon the world scene at the beginning of a new era, amid complete unconsciousness of its resuscitation from the past. Leaving aside the so-called prefigurations in the Old Testament, there is not a single passage in the New Testament where the Trinity is formulated in an intellectually comprehensible manner.1 Generally speaking, it is more a question of formulae for triple benediction, such as the end of the second epistle to the Corinthians: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all," 2 or the beginning of the first 
1 The so-called "Comma Johanneum," which would seem to be an exception. is a demonstrably late interpolation of doubtful origin. Regarded as a dogmatic and revealed text per se, it would afford the strongest evidence for the occurrence of the Trinity in the New Testament. The passage reads (I John 5: 8: "And there are three that bear witness: the Spirit. and the water. and the blood; and these three are one" (DV). That is to say. they agree in their testimony that Christ "came in water and in blood" (verse 6. DV). [In verse 8, AV has "and these three agree in one"; RSV: "and these three agree."- TRANs.I The Vulgate has the late interpolation in verse T "Quoniam tres sunt, qui testimonium dant in caelo: Pater, Verbum et Spiritus Sanctus: et hi tres unum sunt." Note that in the Greek text the three neuter nouns 7rv<v}.la, v5wp, and aT}.la are followed by a masculine plural: o&. TPEL~ Eis TO EJJ ElcTl.v. 
2II Cor. 13: 14 (AV). The haptismal formula "In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost" comes into this category. though its authenticity is 
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A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 
epistle of Peter: " ... chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood," 3 or Jude 20-21. Another passage cited in favour of the Trinity is I Corinthians 12: 4-6, but this only gives the emphatic assurance that the Spirit is one (repeated in Ephesians 4: 4-6), and may be taken more as an incantation against polytheism and polydemonism than an assertion of the Trinity. Triadic formulae were also current in the post-apostolic epoch. Thus Clement says in his first letter (46: 6): " ... Have we not one God, and one Christ, and one Spirit ... " 4 Epiphanius even reports that Christ taught his disciples that "the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are the same." 5 
	208 	Epiphanius took this passage from the apocryphal "Gospel 
according to the Egyptians," 6 of which unfortunately only fragments are preserved. The formula is significant insofar as it provides a definite starting-point for a "modalistic" concept of the Trinity. 
	2°9 	Now the important point is not that the New Testament con- 
tains no trinitarian formulae, but that we find in it three figures who are reciprocally related to one another: the Father, the Son, begotten through the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost. Since olden times, formulae for benediction, all solemn agreements, occasions, attributes, ete. have had a magical, threefold character (e.g., the Trishagion).7 Although they are no evidence for the Trinity in the New Testament, they nevertheless occur and, like the three divine Persons, are clear indications of an active archetype operating beneath the surface and throwing up triadic formations. This proves that the trinitarian archetype is 
doubted. It seems that ori~inally people were baptized only in the name of Jesus Christ. The formula does not occur in Mark and Luke. Cr. Krueger, Das Dogma van der Dreiei1ligkeit lInd Cottmenschheit in seiner geschichtlichen Entwick/llllg, 
	p. 11. 	3 T Peter 1 : 2 (RSV). 
4 Apostolic Fathers, trans. by Lake, T, p. 89. Clement was the third bishop of Rome after Peter, according to lrenaens. His dating is unsure, but he seems to have been born in the second half of the 2nd cent. 
5Panllrium, LXII, 11, in ~1igne, P.C., vol. 41, cols. 1°52-53. 
6 Cf. James, The ApocryPhal New Testament, pp. 1Of. 
7 We might also mention the division of Christ's forbears into 3 X 14 generations in Matthew I: '7· Cf. the role of the '4 royal ancestors in ancient Egypt: Jacobsohn, "Die dogmatische Stellung des Konigs in del' Theologie del' alten Aegypter," pp. 66ff. 
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already at work in the New Testament, for what comes after is largely the result of what has gone before, a proposition which is especially apposite when, as in the case of the Trinity, we are confronted with the effects of an unconscious content or archetype. From the creeds to be discussed later, we shall see that at the synods of the Fathers the New Testament allusions to the divine trio were developed in a thoroughly consistent manner until the homoousia was restored, which again happened unconsciously, since the Fathers knew nothing of the ancient Egyptian model that had already reached the homoousian level. The after-effects on posterity were inevitable consequences of the trinitarian anticipations that were abroad in the early days of Christianity, and are nothing but amplifications of the constellated archetype. These amplifications, so far as they were naive and unprejudiced, are direct proof that what the New Testament is alluding to is in fact the Trinity, as the Church also believes. 
	210 	Since people did not actually know what it was that had so 
suddenly revealed itself in the "Son of Man," but only believed the current interpretations, the effects it had over the centuries signify nothing less than the gradual unfolding of the archetype in man's consciousness, or rather, its absorption into the pattern of ideas transmitted by the cultures of antiquity.8 From this historical echo it is possible to recognize what had revealed itself in a sudden flash of illumination and seized upon men's minds, even though the event, when it happened, was so far beyond their comprehension that they were unable to put it into a clear formula. Before "revealed" contents can be sorted out and properly formulated, time and distance are needed. The results of this intellectual activity were deposited in a series of tenets, the dogmata, which were then summed up in the "symbol urn" or creed. This breviary of belief well deserves the name "symbol urn," for, from a psychological point of view, it gives symbolical expression to, and paints an anthropomorphic picture of, a transcendent fact that cannot be demonstrated or explained rationally, the word "transcendent" being used here in a strictly psychological sense.9 
8 As we know, St. John's gospel marks the beginning of this process. 9 Cf. Psychological Types, DeL 5 l. 
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A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 
1. THE SYMBOLUM APOSTOLICUM 
	211 	The first of these summaries was attempted fairly early, if 
tradition may be relied on. St. Ambrose, for instance, reports that the confession used at baptism in the church of Milan originated with the twelve apostles.10 This creed of the old Church is therefore known as the Apostles' Creed. As established in the fourth century, it ran: 
I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ his only begotten Son our Lord, who was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, buried, and on the third day rose again from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. And [I believe] in the Holy Ghost, the holy Church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the flesh. 
	212 	This creed is still entirely on the level of the gospels and 
epistles: there are three divine figures, and they do not in any way contradict the one God. Here the Trinity is not explicit, but exists latently, just as Clement's second letter says of the pre-existent Church: "It was spiritually there." Even in the very early days of Christianity it was accepted that Christ as Logos was God himself (John 1: 1). For Paul he is pre-existent in God's form, as is clear from the famous "kenosis" passage in Philippians 2: 6 (AV): "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God" (TO EIIICJ.L LO'CJ. 6ECiJ = esse se aequalem Deo). There are also passages in the letters where the author confuses Christ with the Holy Ghost, or where the three are seen as one, as in II Corinthians 3: 17 (DV): "Now the Lord is the spirit" (0 OE KUPLOS TO 7rIlEV/oLCJ. to'TLII = Dominus autem spiritus est). When the next verse speaks of the "glory of the Lord" (06~CJ. KVp[OV = gloria Domini), "Lord" seems to refer to Christ. But if you read the whole passage, from verses 7 to 18, it is evident that the "glory" refers equally to God, thus proving the promiscuity of the three figures and their latent Trinity. 
10 Explanatio symboli ad initiandos. 
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11. THE SYMBOLUM OF GREGORY THAUMATURGUS 
	213 	Although the Apostles' Creed does not stipulate the Trinity 
in so many words, it was nevertheless "spiritually there" at a very early date, and it is nothing but a quibble to insist, as many people do, that the Trinity was "invented only long afterwards." In this connection, therefore, I must mention the vision of Gregory Thaumaturgus (210-70), in which the Blessed Virgin and St. John appeared to him and enunciated a creed which he wrote down on the spot.n It runs: 
One God, Father of the living \Vord, [of his] self-subsistent wisdom and power, [of his] eternal likeness, perfect Begetter of what is perfect, Father of the only begotten Son. One Lord, Alone of the Alone, God of God, veritable likeness of Godhead, effectual \Vord, comprehensive Wisdom by which all things subsist, Power that creates all Creation, true Son of the true Father, unseen [Son] of the unseen [Father], incorruptible of the incorruptible, deathless of the deathless, everlasting of the everlasting. And one Holy Spirit, having existence from God and appearing through the Son, Image of the Son and perfect [Image] of the perfect [Father], Life and cause of life, holy Fount, Ringleader [Xoprryos] of holiness: in whom is manifest God the Father, who is above all and in all, and God the Son, who pervades all. Perfect Trinity, whose glory and eternity and dominion is not divided and not separate,12 
	214 	This trinitarian creed had already established itself in a 
position of authority long before the appearance of the Apostles' Creed, which is far less explicit. Gregory had been a pupil of Origen until about 238. Origen (182-251) employed the concept of the Trinity 13 in his writings and gave it considerable thought, concerning himself more particularly with its internal economy (olKOlIoj.lLa, oeconomia) and the management of its power: 
"I am of the opinion, then, that the God and Father, who holds the universe together, is superior to every being that exists, for he imparts to each one from his own existence that which each one is. The Son, being less than the Father, is superior to 
11 Gregory of Nyssa, De Vita S. Gregorii Thaumaturgi, in Migne, P.G., vol. 46, cols. 911-14. 
12 Caspari, Alte und neue Quellen zur Geschichte des Taufsymbols, pp. 10-17. 13 First mentioned in Tertullian (d. 220). 
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l/!5 
u6 

A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 
rational creatures alone (for he is second to the Father). The Holy Spirit is still less, and dwells within the saints alone. So that in this way the power of the Father is greater than that of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and in turn the power of the Holy Spirit exceeds that of every other holy being." 14 He is not very clear about the nature of the Holy Spirit, for he says: "The Spirit of God, therefore, who, as it is written, moved upon the waters in the beginning of the creation of the world, I reckon to be none other than the Holy Spirit, so far as I can understand." 15 Earlier he says: "But up to the present we have been able to find no passage in the holy scriptures which would warrant us in saying that the Holy Spirit was a being made or created." 16 
Ill. THE NICAENUM 
Trinitarian speculation had long passed its peak when the Council of Nicaea, in 325, created a new creed, known as the "Nicene." It runs: 
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, the only begotten of the Father, being of the substance [ovo-La] of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, consubstantial [OJ.lOOVo-LQs] with the Father, through whom all things have been made which are in heaven and on earth. Who for us men and for our salvation descended and was made flesh, became man, suffered, rose again the third day, ascended into heaven, and will come to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit. As for those who say, "There was a time when He was not," or "Before He was begotten He was not," or "He was made from that which was not, or from another subsistence [ll1roo-Tao-Ls], or substance," or "The Son of God is created, changeable, or subject to change," these the Catholic Church anathematizes,17 
It was, apparently, a Spanish bishop, Hosius of Cordoba, who proposed to the emperor the crucial word oj.loovuu)s. It did 14 Origen, On First Principles, trans. by Butterworth, pp. 33f. 
	15 Ibid., p. 31. 	16 Ibid. 
17 Cf. J. R. Palanque and others, The Church in the Christian Roman Empire, I: 
The Church and the Arian Crisis, p. 96. 
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	PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION 	WEST 
not occur then for the first time, for it can be found in Tertullian, as the "unitas substantiae." The concept of homoousia can also be found in Gnostic usage, as for instance in Irenaeus' references to the Valentinians (140-C. 200), where the Aeons are said to be of one substance with their creator; Bythos.18 The Nicene Creed concentrates on the father-son relationship, while the Holy Ghost receives scant mention. 
IV. THE NICAENO-CONSTANTINOPOLITANUM, THE ATHANASIANUM, AND THE LATERANENSE 
	217 	The next formulation in the N icene-Constantinopolitan 
Creed of 381 brings an important advance. It runs: 
We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was made flesh by the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary and became man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried, and on the third day rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father, whence he shall come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead, and whose kingdom shall have no end. And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father,19 who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spake through the prophets. And [we believe] in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. And we await the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen. 
18 More accurately, the unity of substance consists in the fact that the Aeons are descended from the Logos, which proceeds from Nous, the direct emanation of Bythos. Cf. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, 11, 17, 4, in Migne, P.G., vol. 7, cols. 762-63 (trans. by Roberts and Rambaut, p. 174). 
III [The addition at this point of the words "and from the Son" (Filioque), which, though never accepted by the Eastern Churches, has been universal in the West, both Catholic and Protestant, since the beginning of the eleventh century, is still one of the principal points of contention between the two main sections of the Christian body.-EDITORS.] 
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A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY 
	218 	Here the Holy Ghost is given due consideration: he is called 
"Lord" and is worshipped together with Father and Son. But he proceeds from the Father only. It was this point that caused the tremendous controversy over the "filioque" question, as to whether the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father only, or from the Son as well. In order to make the Trinity a complete unity, the filioque was just as essential as the homoousia. The (falsely so-called) Athanasian Creed 20 insisted in the strongest possible terms on the equality of all three Persons. Its peculiarities have given much offence to rationalistic and liberal-minded theologians. I quote, as a sample, a passage from the beginning: 
Now the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all one; the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, the Holy Ghost uncreated. The Father infinite, the Son infinite, the Holy Ghost infinite. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet not three Eternals, but one Eternal. As also there are not three Uncreated, nor three Infinites, but one Infinite and one Uncreated. So likewise is the Father almighty, the Son almighty, the Holy Ghost almighty; and yet there are not three AImighties, but one Almighty. So the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Ghost is God; and yet there are not three Gods, but one God. Likewise the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Ghost is Lord; and yet there are not three Lords, but one Lord. For just as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge each Person by himself to be both God and Lord, so we are forbidden by the Catholic religion to say there are three Gods or three Lords. The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and the Son, not made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is before or after, none is greater or less; but all three Persons are coeternal together and coequal. So that in 
20 It is also known as the "Symbolum Quicumque," on account of the opening words: "Quicumque vult salvus esse" ('Whosoever would be saved). It does not go back to Athanasius. 
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all ways, as is aforesaid, both the Trinity is to be worshipped in Unity, and the Unity in Trinity. He, therefore, that would be saved, let him think thus of the Trinity.21 

	219 	Here the Trinity is a fully developed conceptual schema in 
which everything balances, the homoousia binding all three Persons equally. The Creed of the Lateran Council, 1215, brings a further differentiation. I shall quote only the beginning: 

We firmly believe and wholeheartedly confess that there is only one true God, eternal, infinite, and unchanging; incomprehensible, almighty, and ineffable; Father and Son and Holy Ghost; three Persons, but one essence; entirely simple in substance and nature. The Father is of none, the Son is of the Father alone, and the Holy Ghost is of both equally; for ever without beginning and without end; the Father begetting, the Son being born, and the Holy Ghost proceeding; consubstantial and coequal and coalmighty and coeternaI.22 

	220 	The "filioque" is expressly taken up into this creed, thus 
assigning the Holy Ghost a special activity and significance. So far as I can judge, the later Creed of the Council of Trent adds nothing further that would be of interest for our theme. 
	221 	Before concluding this section, I would like to call attention 
to a book well known in the Middle Ages, the Liber de Spiritu et Anima)23 which attempts a psychological interpretation of the Trinity. The argument starts with the assumption that by selfknowledge a man may attain to a knowledge of God.24 The mens rationalis is closest to God, for it is "excellently made, and expressly after his likeness." If it recognizes its own likeness to God it will the more easily recognize its creator. And thus knowledge of the Trinity begins. For the intellect sees how wisdom (saPientia) proceeds from it and how it loves this wisdom. But, from intellect and wisdom, there proceeds love, and thus all three, intellect, wisdom, and love, appear in one. The origin of all wisdom, however, is God. Therefore intellect (vovs) corresponds to the Father, the wisdom it begets corresponds to the 

21 [Official version from the Revised Book of Common Prayer (1928), with alternative readings.- TRANs.] 

22 [From the Decrees of the La teran Council, ch. 1.- TRANs.] 23 Erroneously ascribed to St. Augustine. CL Opera, VI. 
24 Ibid., p. 1194, B. 
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Son (AO')'OS), and love corresponds to the Spirit (1rlIfUJ1.a) breathed forth between them.25 The wisdom of God was often identified with the cosmogonic Logos and hence with Christ. The medieval mind finds it natural to derive the structure of the psyche from the Trinity, wLereas the modern mind reverses the procedure. 

23 "The bcgetter is the Father, the begotten is the Son, and that which proceeds from both is the Holy Spirit." Ibid., p. 1195, D. 

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4. THE THREE PERSONS IN THE LIGHT OF PSYCHOLOGY 
1. THE HYPOTHESIS OF THE ARCHETYPE 
	222 	The sequence of creeds illustrates the evolution of the Trin- 
ity idea through the centuries. In the course of its development it either consistently avoided, or successfully combated, all rationalistic deviations, such as, for instance, the so-plausiblelooking Arian heresy. The creeds superimposed on the trinitarian allusions in the Holy Scriptures a structure of ideas that is a perpetual stumbling-block to the liberal-minded rationalist. Religious statements are, however, never rational in the ordinary sense of the word, for they always take into consideration that other world, the world of the archetype, of which reason in the ordinary sense is unconscious, being occupied only with externals. Thus the development of the Christian idea of the Trinity unconsciously reproduced the archetype of the homoousia of Father, Son, and Ka-mutef which first appeared in E~ptian theology. Not that the Egyptian model could be considered the archetype of the Christian idea. The archetype an sich) as I have explained elsewhere,l is an "irrepresentable" factor, a "disposition" which starts functioning at a given moment in the de- 
1 Cf. my "On the Nature of the Psyche," pp. 200ff. 148 

A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY velopment of the human mind and arranges the material of consciousness into definite patterns.2 That is to say, man's conceptions of God are organized into triads and trinities, and a whole host of ritualistic and magical practices take on a triple or trichotomous character, as in the case of thrice-repeated apotropaic spells, formulae for blessing, cursing, praising, giving thanks, etc. \Vherever we find it, the archetype has a compelling force which it derives from the unconscious, and whenever its effect becomes conscious it has a distinctly numinous quality. There is never any conscious invention or cogitation, thoug-h speculations about the Trinity have often been accused of this. All the controversies, sophistries, quibbles, intrigues, and dissensions that are such an odious blot on the history of this dogma owe their existence to the compelling numinosity of the archetype and to the unexampled difficulty of incorporating it in the world of rational thought. Although the emperors may have made political capital out of the quarrels that ensued, this singular chapter in the history of the human mind cannot possibly be traced back to politics, any more than social and economic causes can be held responsible for it. The sole reason for the dogma lies in the Christian "message," which caused a psychic revolution in \Vestern man. On the evidence of the gospels, and of Paul's letters in particular, it announced the real and veracious appearance of the God-man in this humdrum human world, accompanied by all the marvellous portents worthy of the son of God. However obscure the historical core of this phenomenon may seem to us moderns, with our hankering for factual accuracy, it is quite certain that those tremendous psychic effects, lasting for centuries, were not causelessly called 2 I have often been asked where the archetype comes from and whether it is acquired or not. This question cannot be answered directly. Archetypes are. by definition. factors and motifs that arrange the psychic elements into certain images, characterized as archetypal, but in such a way that they can be recognized only from the effects they produce. They exist preconsciously, and presumably they form the strnctural domiuants of the psyche in general. They may be compared to the iuvisible presence of the crystal lattice in a saturated solution. As a priori conditioning factors they represent a special, psychological instance of the biological "pattern of behaviour," which gives all living organisms their specific qualities. Just as the manifestations of this biological ground plan may change in the course of development, so also can those of the archetype. Empirically considered, however, the archetype did not ever come into existence as a phenomenon of organic life, but entered into the picture with life itself. 
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forth, by just nothing at all. Unfortunately the gospel reports, originating in missionary zeal, form the meagrest source imaginable for attempts at historical reconstruction. But, for that very reason, they tell us all the more about the psychological reactions of the civilized world at that time. These reactions and assertions are continued in the history of dogma, where they are still conceived as the workings of the Holy Ghost. This interpretation, though the psychologist has nothing to say in regard to its metaphysical validity, is of the greatest moment, for it proves the existence of an overwhelming opinion or conviction that the operative factor in the formation of ideas is not man's intellect but an authority above and beyond consciousness. This psychological fact should on no account be overlooked, for any theoretical reasons whatsoever. Rationalistic arguments to the effect that the Holy Ghost is an hypothesis that cannot be proved are not commensurable with the statements of the psyche. A delusional idea is real, even though its content is, factually considered, nonsense. Psychology's concern is with psychic phenomena and with nothing else. These may be mere aspects of phenomena which, in themselves, could be subjected to a number of quite different modes of observation. Thus the statement that dogmas are inspired by the Holy Ghost indicates that they are not the product of conscious cogitation and speculation but are motivated from sources outside consciousness and possibly even outside man. Statements of this kind are the rule in archetypal experiences and are constantly associated with the sensed presence of a numen. An archetypal dream, for instance, can so fascinate the dreamer that he is very apt to see in it some kind of illumination, warning, or supernatural help. Nowadays most people are afraid of surrenderin~ to such experiences, and their fear proves the existence of a "holy dread" of the numinous. \Vhatever the nature of these numinous experiences may be, they all have one thing in common: they relegate their source to a region outside consciousness. Psychology uses instead the concept of the pnconscious, and specially that of the collective unconscious as opposed to the personal unconscious. People who reject the former and give credence only to the latter are forced into personalis tic explanations. But collective and, above all, manifestly archetypal ideas can never be derived from the personal sphere. If Communism, for instance, refers to Engels, 
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Marx, Lenin, and so on as the "fathers" of the movement, it does not know that it is reviving an archetypal order of society that existed even in primitive times, thereby explaining, incidentally, the "religious" and "numinous" (i.e., fanatical) character of Communism. Neither did the Church Fathers know that their Trinity had a prehistory dating back several thousand years. 
	223 	There can be no doubt that the doctrine of the Trinity 
originally corresponded with a patriarchal order of society. But we cannot tell whether social conditions produced the idea or, conversely, the idea revolutionized the existing social order. The phenomenon of early Christianity and the rise of Islam, to take only these two examples, show what ideas can do. The layman, having no opportunity to observe the behaviour of autonomous complexes, is usually inclined, in conformity with the general trend, to trace the origin of psychic contents back to the environment. This expectation is certainly justified so far as the ideational contents of consciousness are concerned. In addition to these, however, there are irrational, affective reactions and impulses, emanating from the unconscious, which organize the conscious material in an archetypal way. The more clearly the archetype is constellated, the more powerful will be its fascination, and the resultant religious statements will formulate it accordingly, as something "daemonic" or "divine." Such statements indicate possession by an archetype. The ideas underlying them are necessarily anthropomorphic and are thereby distinguished from the organizing archetype, which in itself is irrepresentable because unconscious.3 They prove, however, that an archetype has been activated.4 
	224 	Thus the history of the Trinity presents itself as the gradual 
crystallization of an archetype that moulds the anthropomorphic conceptions of father and son, of life, and of different persons into an archetypal and numinous figure, the "Most Holy Threein-One." The contemporary witnesses of these events apprehended it as something that modern psychology would call a psychic presence outside consciousness. If there is a consensus of 
3 Cf. the detailed argument which I have put forward in "On the Nature of the Psyche," pp. 200ft 
4 It is very probable that the activation of an archetype depends on an alteration of the consciolls situation, which requires a new form of compensation. 
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