AION 
possessing, as we have seen, magnetic properties. It is that miraculous water from which the olive draws its oil and the grape the wine. "That man," continues Hippolytus, as though still speaking of the water of the Euphrates, "is without honour in the world." 46 This is an allusion to the T€A€W" av()pw7ro,. Indeed, this water is the "perfect man," the p~J.La thou, the Word sent by God. "From the living water we spiritual men choose that which is ours," 47 for every nature, when dipped in this water, "chooses its own substances ... and from this water goes forth to every nature that which is proper to it." 48 The water or, as we could say, this Christ is a sort of panspermia, a matrix of all possibilities, from which the 7rv€Up.aTLK6" chooses "his Osob," his idiosyncrasy,49 that "flies to him more [quickly] than iron to the magnet." But the "spiritual men" attain their proper nature by entering in through the "true door," Jesus Makarios (the blessed), and thus obtaining knowledge of their own wholeness, i.e., of the complete man. This man, unhonoured"in the world, is obviously the inner, spiritual man, who becomes conscious for those who enter in through Christ, the door to life, and are illuminated by him. Two images are blended here: the image of the "strait gate," 50 and that of John 14 : 6: "1 am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me." 51 They represent an integration process that is characteristic of psychological indi· viduation. As formulated, the water symbol continually coalesces with Christ and Christ with the inner man. This, it seems to me, is not a confusion of thought but a psychologically correct formulation of the facts, since Christ as the "Word" is indeed the "living water" and at the same time the symbol of the inner "complete" man, the self. 
	!l'3 	For the Naassenes, the universal "Ground" is the Original 
Man, Adam, and knowledge of him is regarded as the begin- 
	46 Legge, I, p. 144. 	47 Elenchos, v, 9, 21. 
48 v, 9, 19 (Legge trans., p. 144). 
49 This means the integration of the self, which is also referred to in very similar words in the Bogomil document discussed above (pars. 225ff.), concerning the devil as world creator. He too finds what is "proper" (tlhov) to him. 
50 Matt. 7: 14: "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life." 
Gl The passage discussed here is in Elenchos, V, 9, 4ff. (Legge trans., I, p. 140). ~OO 

GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 
ning of perfection and the bridge to knowledge of God.52 He is male/female; from him come "father and mother"; 53 he consists of three parts: the rational (vo€p6v), the psychic, and the earthly (XOLK6v). These three "came down together into one man, Jesus," and "these three men spoke together, each of them from his own substance to his own," i.e., from the rational to the rational, etc. Through this doctrine Jesus is related to the Original Man (Christ as second Adam). His soul is "of three parts and (yet) one"-a Trinity.54 As examples of the Original Man the text mentions the Cabiros 55 and Oannes. The latter had a soul capable of suffering, so that the "figure (7rAaup.a) of the great, most beautiful and perfect man, humbled to a slave," might suffer punishment. He is the "blessed nature, at once hidden and revealed, of everything that has come to be and will be," "the kingdom of heaven which is to be sought within man" (iVT6" (L1,8poJ7rov), even "in children of seven years." 56 For the Naassenes, says Hippolytus, place the "procreative nature of the Whole in the procreative seed." 57 On the face of it, this looks like the beginnings of a "sexual theory" concerning the underlying psychic substance, reminiscent of certain modern attempts in the same vein. But one should not overlook the fact that in reality man's procreative power is only a special instance of the "procreative nature of the Whole." "This, for them, is the hidden and mystical Logos," which, in the text that follows, is,likened to the phallus of Osiris-"and they say Osiris is water." Although the substance of this seed is the cause of all things, it does not partake of their nature. They say therefore: "1 become what 1 will, and 1 am what 1 am." For he who moves everything is himself unmoved. "He, they say, is alone good." 58 A further synonym is the ithyphallic Hermes Kyllenios. "For they say Hermes is the Logos, the interpreter and fashioner of what has 
52 Elenchos, v, 6, 6: 8wii oe 'Yv';J(ns arrTJpnupivTJ TE",,-"WUIS ("Knowledge of God is perfect wholeness"). 
	53 V, 6, 5 (Legge trans., I, p. 120). 	54 V, 6. 6f. (p. 121). 
55 Nicknamed Ka",,-",,-'rraLS, 'with beautiful children' or 'the beautiful child: (Elm. chos, V, 7,4.) 
56 According to Hippocrates, a boy at seven years old is half a father. (Elenchos, V, 7, 21,) 
57 Tf}V apxhovwv rpVUIV TWV Il""-wv ~v dpXhov'l' urrepp,an Archegonos is the tribal father. 
58 With express reference to Matt. 19: 17: "One is good, God." 201 

AlON 
been, is, and will be." That is why he is worshipped as the phallus, because he, like the male organ, "has an urge [opp.~y] from below upwards." 59 
4 
	314 	The fact that not only the Gnostic Logos but Christ himself 
was drawn into the orbit of sexual symbolism is corroborated by the fragment from the Interrogationes maiores MariaeJ quoted by Epiphanius.60 It is related there that Christ took this Mary with him on to a mountain, where he produced a woman from his side and began to have intercourse with her: " ... seminis sui defluxum assumpsisset, indicasse illi, quod oporteat sic facere, ut vivamus." 61 It is understandable that this crude symbolism should offend our modern feelings. But it also appeared shocking to Christians of the third and fourth centuries; and when, in addition, the symbolism became associated with a concretistic misunderstanding, as appeared to be the case in certain sects, it could only be rejected. That the author of the Interrogationes was by no means ignorant of some such reaction is evident from the text itself. It says that Mary received such a shock that she fell to the ground. Christ then said to her: 
"Wherefore do you doubt me, 0 you of little faith?" This was meant as a reference to John 3 : 12: "If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?" and also to John 6 : 54: "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in 
you." 
	315 	This symbolism may well have been based, originally, on 
some visionary experience, such as happens not uncommonly today during psychological treatment. For the medical psychologist there is nothing very lurid about it. The context itself points the way to the right interpretation. The image expresses a psychologem that can hardly be formulated in rational terms and has, therefore, to make use of a concrete symbol, just as a dream must when a more or less "abstract" thought comes up during the abaissement du niveau mental that occurs in sleep. These "shocking" surprises, of which there is certainly no lack 
	59 Cf. Legge trans., p. 128. 	60 Panarium, XXVI, cap. VIII. 
61 " ••• partaking of his flowing semen, showed that this was to be done, that 
we might have life." 
202 

GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 
in dreams, should always be taken "as-if," even though they clothe themselves in sensual imagery that stops at no scurrility and no obscenity. They are unconcerned with offensiveness, because they do not really mean it. It is as if they were stammering in their efforts to express the elusive meaning that grips the dreamer's attention.62 
	316 	The context of the vision (John 3 : 12) makes it clear that 
the image should be taken not concretistically but symbolically; for Christ speaks not of earthly things but of a heavenly or spiritual mystery-a "mystery" not because he is hiding something or making a secret of it (indeed, nothing could be more blatant than the naked obscenity of the vision!) but because its meaning is still hidden from consciousness. The modern method of dream-analysis and interpretation follows this heuristic rule.63 If we apply it to the vision, we arrive at the following result: 
	317 	1. The MOUNTAIN means ascent, particularly the mystical, 
spiritual ascent to the heights, to the place of revelation where the spirit is present. This motif is so well known tha.t there is no need to document it.64 
	!p8 	2. The central significance of the CHRIST-FIGURE for that 
epoch has been abundantly proved. In Christian Gnosticism it was a visualization of God as the Archanthropos (Original Man = Adam), and therefore the epitome of man as such: "Man and the Son of Man." Christ is the inner man who is reached by the path of self-knowledge, "the kingdom of heaven within 
62 On the other hand, I cannot rid myself of the impression that dreams do occasionally twist things in a scurrilous way. This may have led Freud to the singular assumption that they disguise and distort for so-called "moral" reasons. However, this view is contradicted by the fact that dreams just as often do the exact opposite. I therefore incline to the alchemical view that Mercurim-the unconscious Nous-is a "trickster." [Cf. "The Spirit Mercurius" and "The Psychology of the Trickster Figure,"-EDITORS.] 
63 But not the Freudian, "psychoanalytical" method, which dismisses the manifest dream-content as a mere "fa~ade," on the ground that the psychopathology of hysteria leads one to suspect incompatible wishes as dream-motifs. The fact that the dream as well as consciousness rest on an instinctual foundation has nothing to do either with the meaning of the dream-figures or with that of the conscious contents, for the essential thing in both cases is what the psyche has made of the instinctual impulse. The remarkable thing about the Parthenon is not that it consists of stone and was built to gratify the ambitions of the Athenians, but that it is-the Parthenon. 
64 Cf. "Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales," par. 403. 
2°3 

AWN 
yOU." As the Anthropos he corresponds to what is empirically the most important archetype and, as judge of the living and the dead and king of glory, to the real organizing principle of the unconscious, the quaternity, or squared circle of the self.65 In saying this I have not done violelice to anything; my views are based on the experience that mandala structures have the meaning and function of a centre of the unconscious personality.66 The quaternity of Christ, which must be borne in mind in this vision, is exemplified by the cross symbol, the rex gloriaeJ and Christ as the year. 
	319 	3. The production of the WOMAN from his side suggests that 
he is interpreted as the second Adam. Bringing forth a woman means that he is playing the role of the Creator-god in Genesis.67 Just as Adam, before the creation of Eve, was supposed by various traditions to be male/female,68 so Christ here demonstrates his androgyny in a drastic way.69 The Original Man is usually hermaphroditic; in Vedic tradition too he produces his own feminine half and unites with her. In Christian allegory the woman sprung from Christ's side signifies the Church as the Bride of the Lamb. 
	320 	The splitting of the Original Man into husband and wife 
expresses an act of nascent consciousness; it gives birth to a pair of opposites, thereby making consciousness possible. For the beholder of the miracle, Mary, the vision was the spontaneous visualization or projection of an unconscious process in herself. Experience shows that unconscious processes are compensatory to a definite conscious situation. The splitting in the vision would therefore suggest that it is compensating a conscious condition of unity. This unity probably refers in the first place to the figure of the Anthropos, the incarnate God, who was then in the forefront of religious interest. He was, in Origen's words, 
65 CL "The Psychology of Eastern Meditation," pars. 942£. 66 Cf. "A Study in the Process of Individuation." 
67 This is consistent with his nature as the Logos and second Person of the Trinity. 
68 Naturally this view is rejected by the Church. 
69 Three different interpretations of Christ are combined here. Such contaminations are characteristic not only of Gnostic thinking but of all unconscious imageformation. 
2°4 

GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 
the "Vir Dnus," 70 the One Man. It was with this figure that Mary was confronted in her vision. If we assume that the recipient of the vision was in reality a woman-an assumption that is not altogether without grounds-then what she had been missing in the pure, deified masculinity of Christ was the counterbalancing femininity. Therefore it was revealed to her: "I am both, man and woman." This psychologem is still incorporated today in the Catholic conception of Christ's androgyny as the "Virgo de Virgine," though this is more a sententia communis than a conclusio. Medieval iconography sometimes shows Christ with breasts, in accordance with Song of Solomon 1 : 1: "For thy breasts are better than wine" (DV). In Mechthild of Magdeburg, the soul remarks that when the Lord kissed her,71 he had, contrary to expectation, no beard. The tokens of masculinity were lacking. Mechthild had a vision similar to Mary's, dealing with the same problem from a different angle: she saw herself transported to a "rocky mountain" where the Blessed Virgin sat, awaiting the birth of the divine child. When it was born, she embraced it and kissed it three times. As the text points out, the mountain is an allegory of the "spiritualis habitus," or spiritual attitude. "Through divine inspiration she knew how the Son is the innermost core [medulla] of the Father's heart." This medulla is "strengthening, healing, and most sweet"; God's "strength and greatest sweetness" are given to us through the So~, the "Saviour and strongest, sweetest Comforter," but "the innermost [core] of the soul is that sweetest thing." 72 From this it is clear that Mechthild equates the "medulla" with the Father's heart, the Son, and the inner man. Psychologically speaking, "that sweetest thing" corresponds to the self, which is indistinguishable from the God-image. 
	321 	There is a significant difference between the two visions. 
The antique revelation depicts the birth of Eve from Adam on 
70 Gregory the Great, Expositiones in librum I Regum, Lib. I, cap. I (Migne, P.L., vol. 79, col. 23): "For God and man is one Christ. Therefore in that he is caIJed one, he is shown to be incomparable." In accordance with the spirit of the age, his incomparability or uniqueness is explained by the "exceIJence of his virtue." It is, however, significant in itself. 
71 "He offered her his rosy [sic!] mouth to kiss" (Liber gratiae sPiritualis, fol. J ivv). 
72 "MedUlla vera animae est ilIud dulcissimum." Ibid., fol. B. 205 

AWN 
the spiritual level of the second Adam (Christ), from whose side the feminine pneuma, or second Eve, i.e., the soul, appears as Christ's daughter. As already mentioned, in the Christian view the soul is interpreted as the Church: she is the woman who "embraces the man" 73 and anoints the Lord's feet. Mechthild's vision is a continuation of the sacred myth: the daughter-bride has become a mother and bears the Father in the shape of the Son. That the Son is closely akin to the self is evident from the emphasis laid on the quaternary nature of Christ: he has a "fourfold voice" (quadrupZex VOX),74 his heart has four kinds of pulse,75 and from his countenance go forth four rays of light.76 In this image a new millennium is speaking. Meister Eckhart, using a different formulation, says that "God is born from the soul," and when we come to the Cherubinic Wanderer 77 of Angelus Silesius, God and the self coincide absolutely. The times have undergone a profound change: the procreative power no longer proceeds from God, rather is God born from the soul. The mythologem of the young dying god has taken on psychological form-a sign of further assimilation and conscious realization. 
	322 	4. But to turn back to the first vision: the bringing forth of 
the woman is followed by COPULATION. The hieros gamos on the mountain is a well-known motif,78 just as, in the old alchemical pictures, the hermaphrodite has a fondness for elevated places. The alchemists likewise speak of an Adam who always carries his Eve around with him. Their coniunctio is an incestuous act, performed not by father and daughter but, in accordance with the changed times, by brother and sister or mother and son. The latter variant corresponds to the ancient Egyptian mythologem of Amen as Ka-mutef, which means 'husband of his mother,' or of Mut, who is the "mother of her father and daughter of her 
73 Gregory the Great; Migne, P.L., vol. 79, col. 23. Cf. Jerem. 31 : 22: "A woman shall compass a man" (A V). 
74 Liber gratiae sPiritualis, fol. A viir. The quaternity refers to the four gospels. 75 Ibid., fol. B iiv. 
76 Ibid., fol. B viiv. 
77 Cf. Flitch, Angelus Silesius, pp. 128ft 
78 For instance, the hieros gamos of Zeus and Hera on "the heights of Gargaros," Iliad, XIV, 246ff. (Cf. Rieu trans., p. 266.) 
206 

GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 
son." 79 The idea of self-copulation is a recurrent theme in descriptions of the world creator: for instance, God splits into his masculine and feminine halves,80 or he fertilizes himself in a manner that could easily have served as a model for the Interrogationes vision, if literary antecedents must be conjectured. Thus the relevant passage in the Heliopolitan story of the Creation runs: "I, even I, had union with my clenched hand, I joined myself in an embrace with my shadow, I poured seed into my mouth, my own, I sent forth issue in the form of Shu, I sent forth moisture in the form of Tefnut." 81 
	323 	Although the idea of self-fertilization is not touched on in 
our vision, there can be no doubt that there is a close connection between this and the idea of the cosmogonic self-creator. Here, however, world creation gives place to spiritual renewal. That is why no visible creature arises from the taking in of seed; it means a nourishing of life, "that we may live." And because, as the text itself shows, the vision should be understood on the "heavenly" or spiritual plane, the pouring out (hr6ppo~a) refers to a A6yo<; a-rr.pfLaTLK6<;, which in the language of the gospels means a living water "springing up into eternal life." The whole vision reminds one very much of the related alchemical symbolisms. Its drastic naturalism, unpleasantly obtrusive in comparison with the reticence of ecclesiastical language, points back on the one hand to archaic forms of religion whose ideas and' modes of expression had long since been superseded, but forwards, on the other, to a still crude observation of Nature that was just beginning to assimilate the archetype of man. This attempt continued right up to the seventeenth century, when Johannes Kepler recognized the Trinity as underlying the structure of the universe-in other words, when he assimilated this archetype into the astronomer's picture of the world.82 
79 Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten ;lgypter, p. 94. 
80 In the ancient Egyptian view God is "Father and Mother," and "begets and gives birth to himself" (Brugsch, p. 97). The Indian Prajapati has intercourse With his own split-off feminine half. 
81 Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, I, pp. 31Of. 
82 I owe this idea to a lecture delivered by Professor W. pauli, in Zurich, on the archetypal foundations of Kepler's astronomy. Cf. his "The Influence of Archetypal Ideas" etc. 
207 

327 
324 
325 
326 

AlON 
5 
After this digression on the phallic synonyms for the Original Man, we will turn back to Hippolytus' account of the central symbols of the Naassenes and continue with a list of statements about Hermes. 
Hermes is a conjurer of spirits (t{tuXaywy6<;), a guide of souls (t{tuxo7ro/L7r6<;), and a begetter of souls (t{tuxwv aLTto<;). But the souls were "brought down from the blessed Man on high, the archman Adamas, ... into the form of clay, that they might serve the demiurge of this creation, Esaldaios, a fiery god, the fourth by number." 83 Esaldaios corresponds to Ialdabaoth, the highest archon, and also to Saturn.84 The "fourth" refers to the fourth Person-the devil-who is opposed to the Trinity. Ialdabaoth means "child of chaos"; hence when Goethe, borrowing from alchemical terminology, calls the devil the "strange son of chaos," the name is a very apt one. 
Hermes is equipped with the golden wand.85 With it he "drops sleep on the eyes of the dead and wakes up the sleepers." The Naassenes referred this to Ephesians 5 : 14: "Awake, 0 sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light." Just as the alchemists took the well-known allegory of Christ, the lapis angularis or cornerstone, for their lapis philosoPhorumJ so the Naassenes took it as symbolizing their Pro tanthropos Adam, or more precisely, the "inner man," who is a rock or stone, since he came from the 7r€TP7I TOU 'AoafLavTo<;, "fallen from Adamas the arch-man on high." 86 The alchemists said their stone was "cut from the mountain without hands," 87 and the N aassenes say the same thing of the inner man, who was brought down "into the form of oblivion." 88 In Epiphanius the 
83 Elenchos, v, 7, 30f. (Cf. Legge trans., I, p. 128.) 
84 Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, pp. 352f. 
85 Here Hippolytus cites the text of Odyssey, XXIV, 2. 86 Elenchos, V, 7, 36 (Legge trans., I, pp. 129f.). 
87 Daniel 2 : 34: "Thus thou sawest, till a stone was cut out of a mountain without hands" (DV). This was the stone that broke in pieces the clay and iron feet of the statue. 
88 Eis 7"0 7rACt.up.a 7"ijs A-qO'T/S, i.e., lethargia, the state of forgetfulness and sleep resembling that of the dead. The "inner man" is as if buried in the somatic man. He is the "soul in fetters" or "in the prison of the body," as the alchemists say. Lethe corresponds to the modern concept of the unconscious. 
208 

328 

GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 
mountain is the Archanthropos Christ, from whom the stone or inner man was cut. As Epiphanius interprets it, this means that the inner man is begotten "without human seed," "a small stone that becomes a great mountain." 89 
The Archanthropos is the Logos, whom the souls follow "twittering," as the bats follow Hermes in the nekyia. He leads them to Oceanus and-in the immortal words of Homer-to "the doors of Helios and the land of dreams." "He [Hermes] is Oceanus, the begetter of gods and men, ever ebbing and flowing, now forth, now back." Men are born from the ebb, and gods from the flow. "It is this, they say, that stands written: '1 have said, you are gods, and all of you the sons of the most High.' " 90 Here the affinity or identity of God and man is explicit, in the Holy Scriptures no less than in the Naassene teachings. 
6 
The Naassenes, as Hippolytus says,91 derived all things from a triad, which consists firstly of the "blessed nature of the blessed Man on high, Adamas," secondly of the mortal nature of the lower man, and thirdly of the "kingless race begotten from above," to which belong "Mariam the sought-for one, and Jothor 92 the great wise one, and Sephora 93 the seer, and Moses whose generation was not in Egypt." 94 Together these four form a marriage quaternio 95 of the classic type: 
	HUSBAND - 	WIFE 
I 
	SISTER 	- BROTHER 
89 Ancoratus, 40. Cf. Daniel 2 : 35: "But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth" (DV). 
90 Elenchos, V, 7, 37 (Legge trans., I, p. 130). CL Psalm 82 (Vulg. 81) : 6, to which reference is made in Luke 6 : 35 and John 10 : 34. 
91 V, 8, 2 (ibid., p. 131). 
92 'IoOwp = Jethro, the priest-king of Midian and the father-in-law of Moses. 93 Zipporah, the wife of Moses. 
94 This is probably an allusion to the pneumatic nature of the "generation" prodUced by Moses, for, according to Elenchos, V, 7, 41, "Egypt is the body" (Legge trans., I, p. 130). 
95 The marriage quaternio is the archetype to which the cross-cousin marriage corresponds on a primitive level. I have given a detailed account of it in "The PSYchology of the Transference," pars. 425ff. 
2°9 

AION 
Moses corresponds to the husband, Sephora to the wife; Mariam (Miriam) is the sister of Moses; J othor (J ethro) is the archetype of the wise old man and corresponds to the fatheranimus, if the quaternio is that of a woman. But the fact that Jothor is called "the great wise one" suggests that the quaternio is a man's. In the case of a woman the accent that falls here on the wise man would fall on Mariam, who would then have the significance of the Great Mother. At all events our quaternio lacks the incestuous brother-sister relationship, otherwise very common. Instead, Miriam has something of a mother significance for Moses (cf. Exodus 2 : 4ff.). As a prophetess (Exodus 15 : 20f.) she is a "magical" personality. When Moses took a Moor to wife-the "Ethiopian woman"-this incensed Miriam so much that she was smitten with leprosy and became "as white as snow" (Numbers 12 : 10). Miriam is therefore not altogether unsuited to play the role of the anima. The best-known animafigure in the Old Testatnent, the Shulamite, says: "I am black, but comely" (Song of Songs I : 5). In the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, the royal bride is the concubine of the Moorish king. Negroes, and especially Ethiopians, play a considerable role in alchemy as synonyms of the caput corvi and the nigredo.96 They appear in the Passion of St. Perpetua 97 as representatives of the sinful pagan world. 
The triad is characterized by various names that may be onomatopoetic: Kaulakau, Saulasau, Zeesar.98 Kaulakau means the higher Adam, Saulasau the lower, mortal man, and Zeesar is named the "upwards-flowing Jordan." The Jordan was caused 
96 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, par. 484. 
97 See the study by Marie-Louise vbn Franz. 
98 These words occur in the Hebrew of Isaiah 28: 10, where they describe what "men with stammering lips and alien tongue" speak to the people. [The Hebrew runs: "tsaw latsaw, tsaw latsaw, kaw lakaw, kaw lakaw, zeer sham, zeer sham."EDITORS.] AV: "For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line; here a little and there a little," 
lnO 

Their synonyms are: 
MOTHER QUEEN 
THE UNKNOWN WOMAN ANIMA 

FATHER KING 
THE DISTANT LOVER ANIMUS 

GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 
by Jesus to flow up-stream; it is the rising flood and this, as already mentioned, is the begetter of gods. "This, they say, is the human hermaphrodite in all creatures, whom the ignorant call 'Geryon of the threefold body' [that is, WS €K "Y~s peOIlTa, 'flowing from the earth']; but the Greeks name it the celestial horn of the moon." The text defines the above-mentioned quaternioJ which is identical with Zeesar, the upwards-flowing Jordan, the hermaphrodite, Geryon of the threefold body, and the horn of the moon, as the cosmogonic Logos (John I : 1££.), and the "life that was in him" (John I : 4) as a "generation of perfect men" (TeAHOt aIlOpW1rot).99 
	331 	This Logos or quaternity is "the cup from which the king, 
drinking, draws his omens," 100 or the beaker of Anacreon. The cup leads Hippolytus on to the wine miracle at Cana, which, he says, "showed forth the kingdom of heaven"; for the kingdom of heaven lies within us, like the wine in the cup. Further parallels of the cup are the ithyphallic gods of Samothrace and the K yllenic Hermes, who signify the Original Man as well as the spiritual man who is reborn. This last is "in every respect consubstantial" with the Original Man symbolized by Hermes. For this reason, says Hippolytus, Christ said that one must eat of his flesh and drink of his blood, for he was conscious of the individual nature of each of his disciples, and also of the need of each "to come to his own special nature." 101 
	332' 	Another synonym is Korybas, who was descended from the 
crown of the head and from the unformed (axapaKT1/p[CTTOIl) brain, like the Euphrates from Eden, and permeates all things. His image exists-unrecognized-"in earthly form." He is the god who dwells in the flood. I need not describe this symbol here, as I have already discussed it at some length in one of my Paracelsus studies.102 So far as Korybas is concerned, the parallel b~tween him and the Protanthropos is explained by the ancient VIew that the corybants were the original men.103 The name "Korybas" does not denote a particular personality, but rather the anonymous member of a collectivity, such as the Curetes, 99 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 55of. [Cf. Legge trans., I, p. 131.] 
100 Cf. Genesis 44 : 5. 
101 Elenchos, V, 8, 12 (Legge trans., I, p. 133). 102 "P 
aracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon," pars. 181ff. 
103 Roscher, Lexikon, 11, part 1, col. 1608, s.v. "Kuretes." 
211 

S34 
AION 
Cabiri, Dactyls, etc. Etymologically, it has been brought into connection with KOpV<P~ (crown of the head), though this is not certain.104 Korybas seems in our text to be the name of a single personality-the K yllenian Hermes, who appears here as synonymous with the Cabiri of Samothrace. With reference to this Hermes the text says: "Him the Thracians ... call Korybas." 105 I have suggested in an earlier publication 106 that this unusual single personality may perhaps be a product of contamination with Korybas, known to us from the Dionysus legend, because he too seems to have been a phallic being, as we learn from a scholium to Lucian's De dea Syria.10T 
	333 	From the centre of the "perfect man" flows the ocean (where, 
as we have said, the god dwells). The "perfect" man is, as Jesus says, the "true door," through which the "perfect" man must go in order to be reborn. Here the problem of how to translate "teleios" becomes crucial; for-we must ask-why should anyone who is "perfect" need renewal through rebirth? 108 One can only conclude that the perfect man was not so perfected that no further improvement was possible. We encounter a similar difficulty in Philippians 3: 12, where Paul says: "Not that I ... am already perfect" (TfTft..€[wp.at). But three verses further on he writes: "Let us then, as many as are perfect (rlt..€tot) be of this mind." The Gnostic use of rlt..€to~ obviously agrees with Paul's. The word has only an approximate meaning and amounts to much the same thing as 7I'VEvp.aTtK6~, 'spiritual,' 109 which is not connected with any conception of a definite degree of perfection or spirituality. The word "perfect" gives the sense of the Greek rlt..€to~ correctly only when it refers to God. But when it applies to a man, who in addition is in need of rebirth, it can at most mean "whole" or "complete," especially if, as our text says, the 
104 Ibid., col. 1607. The descent from the brain may be an allusion to the ancient idea that the sperm' was conducted down from the head to the genitals, through the spinal cord. [Cf. Onians, The Origins of European Thought, p. 234.-EDITORS.] 105 Elenchos, V, 8, 13 (Legge trans., I, p. 133). 
106 "The Spirit Mercurius," par. 278. 
lOT Roscher, col. 1392, s.v. "Korybos," where the text is given in full. 
108 The alchemists say very aptly: "Perfectum non perficitur" (that which is perfect is not perfected). 
109 Elenchos, V, 8, 22, describes the 7rp<vp.aTLKo[ as "perfect men endowed with reason," from which it is clear that the possession of an anima rationalis is what makes the "spiritual" man. 
212 

GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 
complete man cannot even be saved unless he passes through this door.llo 
The father of the "perfectus" is the higher man or Pro tan- 
thropos, who is "not clearly formed" and "without qualities." 
Hippolytus goes on to say that he is called Papa (Attis) by the Phrygians. He is a bringer of peace and quells "the war of the elements" in the human body,111 a statement we meet again word for word in medieval alchemy, where the filius philosojJhorum "makes peace between enemies or the elements." 112 This "Papa" is also called I'lKV~ (cadaver), because he is buried in the body like a mummy in a tomb. A similar idea is found in Paracelsus; his treatise De vita longa opens with the words: 
"Life, verily, is naught but a kind of embalmed mummy, which preserves the mortal body from the mortal worms." 113 The body lives only from the "Mumia," through which the "peregrinus microcosmus," the wandering microcosm (corresponding to the macrocosm), rules the physical body.114 His synonyms are the Adech, Archeus, Protothoma, Ides, Idechtrum, ete. He is the 
110 Elenehos, V. 8, 21 (Legge trans., I, p. 134). Cramer (Bibl.-theol. Worterbueh der Neutestamentliehen Griizitiit) gives as the meaning of rtA<ws 'complete, perfect, lacking nothing, having reached the destined goal.' Bauer (Grieeh.-deutseh. W6rterbueh zu den Sehriften des Neuen Testaments, col. 1344) has, with reference to age, 'mature, full-grown: and with reference to the mysteries, 'initiated.' Lightfoot (Notes on the EPistles of St Paul, p. 173) says: "T.'A<<os is properly that of which the parts are fully developed, as distinguished from oA6KA7/pos, that in which none of the parts are wanting, 'full-grown: as opposed to P>77rtos, 'childish: or 7raLota, ·childhood.''' Teleios is the man who has received Nous: he has gnosis (knowledge). Cf. Guignebert, "Quelques remarques sur la perfection (T<A<lw(1Ls) et ses voies dans le mystere paulinien," p. 419. Weiss (The History of Primitive Christianity, 11, p. 576) declares that it is just the "consciousness of imperfection and the will to progress that is the sign of perfection." He bases this on Epictetus (Enehiridion, 51, If.), where it says that he who has resolved to progress (7rpoK67rT<tP) is, by anticipation, already "perfect." 
111 First mentioned at V, 8, 19. [Cf. Legge, I, p. 134.J 
112 Hermetis Trismegisti Traetatus vere Aureus cum sehoUis (1610), p. 44. 
113 Published 1562 by Adam von Bodenstein. In Paracelsus Siimtliche Werke, 00. SUdhoff, Ill, p. 249. [Cf. "Paracelsus the Physician:' par. u.J 
114 De origine Morborum invisibilium, beginning of Book IV, says of the Mumia: 
"AIl the pOwer of herbs and of trees is found in the Mumia; not only the power of the plants grown of earth, but also of water, all the properties of metals, all the qualities of marcasites, all the essence of precious stones. How should I count all these things, and name them? They are all within man, no fewer and no less, as strong and as powerful, in the Mumia." (Volumen Paramirum, pp. 291ff.) 
213 

121 In Genesim ham. XI, 3 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, col. 224): "And that ye may see the well of vision, and take from it the living water, which shall be in you a fountain of water springing up unto eternal life." 
122 Ibid., I, 2 (col. 148). 
123 In Numeros ham. XVII, 4 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, cols. 707f.): "For these paradises upon the waters are like and akin to that paradise in which is the tree of life. And the waters we may take to be either the writings of the apostles and eVangelists, or the aid given by the angels and celestial powers to such souls; for by these they are watered and inundated, and nourished unto all knowledge and understanding of heavenly things; although our Saviour also is the river which rnaketh glad the city of God; and the Holy Spirit not only is himself that river, but out of those to whom he is given, rivers proceed from their belly." 
124 See the valuable compilation of patristic allegories in Rahner, "Flumina de ventre Christi," pp. 26gff. The above reference is on p. 370 and comes from Bippolytus' Commentary on Daniel, I, 17 (Werke, I, pp. 28£.). 
125 In Genesim hom. I, 2 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, col. 147). 
215 
335 
336 

AION 
"Protoplast" (the first-created), and, as Ides, "the door whence all created things have come." 115 (Cf. the "true door" above!) The Mumia is born together with the body and sustains it,11tl though not to the degree that the "supercelestial Mumia" does. m The latter would correspond to the higher Adam of the Naassenes. Of the Ideus or Ides Paracelsus says that in it "there is but One Man ... and he is the Protoplast." 118 
The Paracelsian Mumia therefore corresponds in every way to the Original Man, who forms the microcosm in the mortal man and, as such, shares all the powers of the macrocosm. Since it is often a question of cabalistic influences in Paracelsus, it may not be superfluous in this connection to recall the figure of the cabalistic Metatron. In the Zohar the Messiah is described as the "central column" (i.e., of the Sephiroth system), and of this column it is said: "The column of the centre is Metatron, whose name is like that of the Lord. It is created and constituted to be his image and likeness, and it includes all gradations from Above to Below and from Below to Above, and binds [them] together in the centre." 119 
The dead man, Hippolytus continues, will rise again by passing through the "door of heaven." Jacob saw the gate of heaven on his way to Mesopotamia, "but they say Mesopotamia is the stream of the great ocean that flows from the midst of the perfect man." This is the gate of heaven of which Jacob said: 
"How terrible is this place! This is no other but the house of God, and the gate of heaven." 120 The stream that flows out of the Original Man (the gate of heaven) is interpreted here as the flood-tide of Ocean us, which, as we have seen, generates the gods. The passage quoted by Hippolytus probably refers to John 7 : 38 or to an apocryphal source common to both. The passage in John-"He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water"-refers to a nonbiblical source, which, however, seemed scriptural to the author. Whoever drinks of this water, in him it shall be a foun- 
115 Fragmentarische Ausarbeitungen zur Anatomie (Sudhoff, Ill, p. 462). 
116 The Mumia is, accordingly, an alexipharmic. (De mumia libelius; ibid., p. 375,) 117 De vita longa, Lib. IV, cap. VII (ibid., p. 284). 
118 "Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon," par. 168. 
119 Zohar, cited in Schoettgen, Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae, n, p. 16. 120 Gen. 28 : 17 (DV). 
214 

337 

GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 
tainof water springing up into eternal life, says Origen.l21 This water is the "higher" water, the aqua doctrinae} the rivers from the belly of Christ, and the divine life as contrasted with the "lower" water, the aqua abyssi} where the darknesses are, and where dwell the Prince of this world and the deceiving dragon and his angels.122 The river of water is the "Saviour" himself.123 Christ is the river that pours into the world through the four gospels,m like the rivers of Paradise. I have purposely cited the ecclesiastical allegories in greater detail here, so that the reader can see how saturated Gnostic symbolism is in the language of the Church, and how, on the other hand, particularly in Origen, the liveliness of his amplifications and interpretations has much in common with Gnostic views. Thus, to him as to many of his contemporaries and successors, the idea of the cosmic correspondence of the "spiritual inner man" was something quite familiar: in his first Homily on Genesis he says that God first created heaven, the whole spiritual substance,. and that the counterpart of this is "our mind, which is itself a spirit, that is, it is our spiritual inner man which sees and knows God." 125 
These examples of Christian parallels to the partly pagan views of the Gnostics may suffice to give the reader a picture of the mentality of the first two centuries of our era, and to show how closely the religious teachings of that age were connected with psychic facts. 

SS8 

AION 
7 
Now let us come back to the symbols listed by Hippolytus. 
The Original Man in his latent state-so we could interpret the term &xapaKTl']pt(m~'i-is named AiPolos, "not because he feeds hegoats and she-goats," but because he is &(t7T6,\,o'i, the Pole that turns the cosmos round.126 This recalls the parallel ideas of the alchemists, previously mentioned, about Mercurius, who is found at the North Pole. Similarly the Naassenes named Aipolos -in the language of the Odyssey-Proteus. Hippolytus quotes Homer as follows: "This place is frequented by the Old Man of the Sea, immortal Proteus the Egyptian ... who always tells the truth ... " 127 Homer then continues: " ... who owes allegiance to Poseidon and knows the sea in all its depths." 128 Proteus is evidently a personification of the unconscious: 129 it is difficult to "catch this mysterious old being ... he might see me first, or know I am there and keep away." One must seize him quickly and hold him fast, in order to force him to speak. Though he lives in the sea, he comes to the lonely shore at the sacred noon-tide hour, like an amphibian, and lies down to sleep among his seals. These, it must be remembered, are warmblooded-that is to say, they can be thought of as contents of the unconscious that are capable of becoming conscious, and at certain times they appear spontaneously in the light and airy world of consciousness. From Proteus the wandering hero learns how he may make his way homewards "over the fish-giving sea," and thus the Old Man proves to be a psychopomp.130 Ov 7Tt7TpaaKETat, Hippolytus says of him, which can best be translated by the French colloquialism "il ne se laisse pas rouler." "But," the text goes on, "he spins round himself and changes his shape." He behaves, therefore, like a revolving image that cannot be grasped. What he says is V'YJP.fpT~'i, 'in sooth,' infallible; he is a 
126 Elenchos, V. 8, 34 (Legge. I, p. 137). This is a play on the words al1f6~os (from al'Yo1f6~os), 'goat-herd,' and d<L1f6~os (from dEl 1fo~"iv, 'ever turning'). Hence 1f6~os = the earth's axis, the Pole. 
	127 Odyssey, trans. by Rouse, p. 65. 	128 Ibid., trans. by Rieu, p. 74· 
129 He has something of the character of the "trickster" (cf. n. 62, supra). 
130 Proteus has much in common with Hermes: above all, the gift of second sight and the power of shape-shifting. In Faust (Part n, Act 5) he tells the HomuncUlus how and where to begin his labours. 
216 

GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 
"soothsayer." So it is not for nothing that the Naassenes say that "knowledge of the complete man is deep indeed and hard to comprehend." 
	339 	Subsequently, Proteus is likened to the green ear of corn in 
the Eleusinian mysteries. To him is addressed the cry of the celebrants: "The Mistress has borne the divine boy, Brimo has borne Brimos!" A "lower" correspondence to the high Eleusinian initiations, says Hippolytus, is the dark path of Persephone, who was abducted by the god of the underworld; i~ leads "to the grove of adored Aphrodite, who rouses the sickness of love." Men should keep to this lower path in order to be initiated "into the great and heavenly" mysteries.13l For this mystery is "the gate of heaven" and the "house of God," where alone the good God dwells, who is destined only for the spiritual men. They should put off their garments and all become vv/uptOt, 'bridegrooms,' "robbed of their virility by the virgin spirit." 132 This is an allusion to Revelation 14 : 4: " ... for they are virgins. These ... follow the Lamb whithersoever 'he goeth." 133 131 When I visited the ancient pagoda at Turukalukundram, southern India, a local pundit explained to me that the old temples were purposely covered on the outside, from top to bottom, with obscene sculptures, in order to remind ordinary people of their sexuality. The spirit, he said, was a great danger, because Yama, the god of death, would instantly carry off these people (the "imperfecti") if they trod the spiritual path directly, without preparation. The erotic sculptures were meant to remind them of their dharma (law), which bids them fulfil their ordinary lives. Only when they have fulfilled their dharma can they tread the spiritual path. The obscenities were intended to arouse the erotic curiosity of visitors to the temples, so that they should not forget their dharma; otherwise they would not fulfil it. Only the man who was qualified by his karma (the fate earned through works in previous existences), and who was destined for the life of the spirit, could ignore this injunction with impunity, for to him these obscenities mean nothing. That was also why the two seductresses stood at the entrance of the temple, luring the people to fulfil their dharma, because only in this way could the ordinary man attain to higher spiritual development. And since the temple represented the whole world, all human activities were portrayed in it; and because most people are always thinking of sex anyway. the great majority 
of the temple sculptures were of an erotic nature. For this reason too, he said. the lingam (phallus) stands in the sacred cavity of the adyton (Holy of Holies), in the garbha griha (house of the womb). This pundit was a Tantrist (scholastic; tantra :::: 'book'). 
132 Their prototypes are the emasculated Attis and the priests of Eleusis, who, before celebrating the hieros gamos, were made impotent with a draught of hemlock. 
133 ef. Matt. 5 : 8: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." 217 

341 
343 
342 
MO 

AION 
8 
Among the objective symbols of the self I have already mentioned the Naassene conception of the api.pLCTTO' CTTLY""~, the indivisible point. This conception fully accords with that of the "Monad" and "Son of Man" in Mono:imos. Hippolytus says: 
MonoYmos ... thinks that there is some such Man as Oceanus, of whom the poet speaks somewhat as follows: Oceanus, the origin of gods and of men.134 Putting this into other words, he says that the Man is All, the source of the universe, unbegotten, incorruptible, everlasting; and that there is a Son of the aforesaid Man, who is begotten and capable of suffering, and whose birth is outside time, neither willed nor predetermined ... This Man is a single Monad, uncompounded [and] indivisible, [yet] compounded [and] divisible; loving and at peace with all things [yet] warring with all things and at war with itself in all things; unlike and like [itself], as it were a musical harmony containing all things ... showing forth all things and giving birth to all things. It is its own mother, its own father, the two immortal names. The emblem of the perfect Man, says MonoYmos, is the jot or tittle.135 This one tittle is the uncompounded, simple, unmixed Monad, having its composition from nothing whatsoever, yet composed of many forms, of many parts. That single, indivisible jot is the many-faced, thousandeyed and thousand-named, the jot of the iota. This is the emblem of that perfect and indivisible Man .... The Son of the Man is the one iota, the one jot flowing from on high, full and filling all things, containing in himself everything that is in the Man, the Father of the Son of Man.136 
134 A condensation of Iliad, XIV, 200f. and 246: "I am going to the ends of the fruitful earth to visit Ocean, the forbear of the gods, and Mother Tethys ... even Ocean Stream himself, who is the forbear of them all." (Rieu trans., pp. 262f.) 135 The iota (r7Jv ,."iav Kfpaiav), the smallest Greek character, corresponding to our "dot" (which did not exist in Greek). C£. Luke 16: 17: "And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fall." Also Matt. s: 18. This may well be the origin of the iota symbolism, as Irenaeus (Adv. haer., I, 3, 2) suggests. 
136 Elenchos, VIII, 12, sff. (Legge, pp. lo7ff.). All this is a Gnostic paraphrase of John 1 and at the same time a meaningful exposition of the psychological self. The relationship of the , to the self is the same as that of the Hebrew letter Yod (') to the laPis in the cabala. The Original Man, Adam, signifies the small hook at the top of the letter Yod. (Shaare Kedusha, Ill, 1.) 
218 

344 

GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 
This paradoxical idea of the Monad in Mono:imos describes the psychological nature of the self as conceived by a thinker of the second century under the influence of the Christian message. 
A parallel conception is to be found in Plotinus, who lived 
a little later (c. 205-70). He says in the Enneads: "Self-knowledge reveals the fact that the soul's natural movement is not in a straight line, unless indeed it have undergone some deviation. On the contrary, it circles around something interior, around a centre. Now the centre is that from which proceeds the circle, that is, the soul. The soul will therefore move around the centre, that is, around the principle from which she proceeds; and, trending towards it, she will attach herself to it, as indeed all souls should do. The souls of the divinities ever direct themselves towards it, and that is the secret of their divinity; for divinity consists in being attached to the centre .... Anyone who withdraws from it is a man who has remained un-unified, or who is a brute." 137 
Here the point is the centre of a circle that is created, so to speak, by the circumambulation of the soul. But this point is the "centre of all things," a God-image. This is an idea that still underlies the mandala-symbols in modern dreams.138 
Of equal significance is the idea, also common among the Gnostics, of the CT7rLVO~p or spark.139 It corresponds to the scintilla vitae) the "little spark of the soul" in Meister Eckhart,140 which we meet with rather early in the teachings of Saturninus.141 Similarly Heraclitus, "the physicist," is said to have conceived the soul as a "spark of stellar essence." 142 Hippolytus says that in the doctrine of the Sethians the darkness held "the bright- 
187 Ennead, VI, g, 8 (Guthrie trans., p. 163, slightly mod.). 
138 See "A Study in the Process of Individuation" and "Concerning Mandala Symbolism." 
139 Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, p. 321, says: "[The Gnostics believed] that human beings, or at any rate some human beings, carry within them from the beginning a higher element [the sPintherJ deriving from the world of light, which enables them to rise above the world of the Seven into the upper world of light, where dwell the unknown Father and the heavenly Mother." 
140 Meerpohl, "Meister Eckharts Lehre vom Seelenfunklein." 
141Irenaeus, Adv. haer., I, 24. The pneumatikoi contain a small part of the Pleroma (11, 2g). Cf. the doctrine of Satorneilos in Hippolytus, Elenchos, VII. ll8, 3 (Legge trans., 11, pp. 80£.). 
142 Macrobius, Commentarium in Somnium Scipionis, XIV, 19. 
219 

M5 

AION 
ness and the spark of light in thrall," 143 and that this "very small spark" was finely mingled in the dark waters 144 below.145 Simon Magus 146 likewise teaches that in semen and milk there is a very small spark which "increases and becomes a power boundless and immutable." 147 
The symbol of the point is found also in alchemy, where it stands for the arcane substance; in Michael Maier 148 it signifies "the purity or homogeneity of the essence." It is the "punctum solis" 149 in the egg-yolk, which grows into a chick. In Khunrath it represents Sa pi entia in the form of the "salt-point"; 150 in Maier it symbolizes gold.m To the scholiast of the "Tractatus aureus" it is the midpoint, the "circulus exiguus" and "mediator" which reconciles the hostile elements and "by persistent rotation changes the angular form of the square into a circular one like itself." 152 For Dorn the "punctum vix intelligibile" is 
148 Elenchos, V, 19, 7: "IvC1 lx'1 TOV 'rTrLV8ijpC1 ~OVA<VOVTC1. 
144 This idea reappears in alchemy in numerous variations. Cf. Michael Maier, Symbola aureae mensae, p. 380, and Scrutinium chymicum, Emblema XXXI: 
"The King swimming in the sea, and crying with a loud voice: Whosoever shall bring me out, shall have a great reward." Also AuroTa Consurgens (ed. von Franz), p. 57: "For this cause have I laboured night by night with crying, my jaws become hoarse; who is the man that liveth, knowing and understanding, delivering my soul from the hand of hell?" 
145 Elenchos, V, 21, 1: Tov IrTrLV8ijpC1 TOV EAax,uTov EV Tois UKOT<tvois iI~C1UL KaT'" KC1TC1",<",i x8a, A<7rTws. 
146 Elenchos, VI, 17,7. Cf. "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass," par. 359, 147 Cf. the vision reported by Wickes, The Inner World of Man, p. 245. It is a typical piece of individuation symbolism: "Then I saw that on the shaft there hung a human figure that held within itself all the loneliness of the world and of the spaces. Alone, and hoping for nothing, the One hung and gazed down into the void. For long the One gazed, drawing all solitude unto itself. Then deep in the fathomless dark was born an infinitesimal spark. Slowly it rose from the bottomless depth, and as it rose it grew until it became a star. And the star hung in space just opposite the figure, and the white light streamed upon the Lonely One." Conversely, it is related of Zoroaster that he drew down sparks from a star, which scorched him. (Bousset, p. 146.) 
148 Maier, De circulo physico quadrato (1616), p. 27· 
149 Or punctus soUs. "In the egg therefore are four things: earth, water, air, and fire; but the 'punctum solis' is apart from these four, in the midst of the yolk (which) is the chick." (Turba, Sermo IV.) Ruska (Turba philosoPhorum, p. 51) puts "saliens" instead of "solis" ("springing point" instead of "sun-point"), in the belief that all the copyists repeated the same error. I am not so sure of this. 
	150 Von hylealischen Chaos, p. 194. 	151 De circulo quadrato, p. 27· 
152 Theatr. chem., IV, p. 691. 
220 

GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 
the starting point of creation. m Similarly John Dee says that all things originated from the point and the monad.154 Indeed, God himself is simultaneously both the centre and the circumference. In Mylius the point is called the bird of Hermes.155 In the "Novum lumen" it is spirit and fire, the life of the arcane substance, similar to the spark.m This conception of the point is more or less the same as that of the Gnostics. 
	!J46 	From these citations we can see how Christ was assimilated 
to symbols that also meant the kingdom of God, for instance the grain of mustard-seed, the hidden treasure, and the pearl of great price. He and his kingdom have the same meaning. Objections have always been made to this dissolution of Christ's personality, but what has not been realized is that it represents at the same time an assimilation and integration of Christ into the human psyche.m The result is seen in the growth of the human personality and in the development of consciousness. These specific at~ainments are now gravely threatened in our antichristian age, not only by the sociopolitical delusional systems, but above all by the rationalistic hybris which is tearing our consciousness from its transcendent roots and holding before it immanent goals. 
153 "Physica genesis," Theatr. chem., I, p. 382. 
154 Monas hieroglyphica (first edn., 1564). Also in Theatr. chem. (1602), U, p. 218. 
	155 Phil. ref., p. 131. 	156 Mus. herm., p. 559. 
157 Here I would like to cite a theological opinion: "Jesus is a synthesis and a growth, and the resultant form is one which tells of a hundred forces which went to its making. But the interesting thing is that the process did not end with the closing of the canon. Jesus is still in the making." Roberts, "Jesus or Christ?A Reply," p. 124. 
221 

XIV 
THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 
1 
	347 	The examples given in the previous chapter should be suf- 
ficient to describe the progressive assimilation and amplification of the archetype that underlies ego-consciousness. Rather than add to their number unnecessarily, I will try to summarize them so that an over-all picture results. From various hints dropped by Hippolytus, it is clear beyond a doubt that many of the Gnostics were nothing other than psychologists. Thus he reports them as saying that "the soul is very hard to fmd and to comprehend," 1 and that knowledge of the whole man is just as difficult. "For knowledge of man is the beginning of wholeness (Td\!{wO'L',), but knowledge of God is perfect wholeness (u7r'1)pnup.lv'1) T!Adwut<;)." Clement of Alexandria says in the Paedagogus (Ill, I): "Therefore, as it seems, it is the greatest of all disciplines to know oneself; for when a man knows himself, he knows God." And Monolmos, in his letter to Theophrastus, writes: "Seek him from out thyself, and learn who it is that taketh possession of everything in thee, saying: my god, my spirit, my understanding, my soul, my body; and learn whence is sorrow and joy, and love and hate, and waking though one would not, and sleeping though one would not, and getting angry though one would not, and falling in love though one would not. And if thou shouldst closely investigate these things, thou wilt find Him in thyself, the One and the Many, like to that little point LKEpa[a], for it is in thee that he hath his origin and his deliverance." 2 
	!l48 	One cannot help being reminded, in reading this text, of the 
Indian idea of the Self as brahman and atman, for instance in 
1 Elenchos, V, 7, 8 (Legge trans., I, p. 1113)' 
12 Elenchos, VIII, 15, 1ff. Cf. Legge trans., 11. p. 10. 222 

THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 
the Kena Upanishad: "By whom willed and directed does the mind fly forth? By whom commanded does the first breath move? Who sends forth the speech we utter here? What god is it that stirs the eye and ear? The hearing of the ear, the thinking of the mind, the speaking of the speech ... That which speech cannot express, by which speech is expressed ... which the mind cannot think, by which the mind thinks, know that as Brahman." 3 
	349 	Yajiiyavalkya defines it in indirect form in the Brihadaran- 
yaka Upanishad: "He who dwells in all beings, yet is apart from all beings, whom no beings know, whose body is all beings, who controls all beings from within, he is your Self, the inner controller, the immortal. ... There is no other seer but he, no other hearer but he, no other perceiver but he, no other knower but he. He is your Self, the inner controller, the immortal. All else is of sorrow.4 
	350 	In Monolmos, who was called "the Arab," Indian influences 
are not impossible. His statement is significant because it shows that even in the second century 5 the ego was considered the exponent of an all-embracing totality, the self-a thought that by no means all psychologists are familiar with even today. These insights, in the Near East as in India, are the product of intense introspective observation that can only be psychological. Gnosis is undoubtedly a psychological knowledge whose contents derive from the unconscious. It reached its insights by concentrating on the "subjective factor," 6 which consists empirically in the demonstrable influence that the collective uncon· scious exerts on the conscious mind. This would explain the astonishing parallelism between Gnostic symbolism and the findings of the psychology of the unconscious. 
	351 	I would like to illustrate this parallelism by summarizing the 
symbols previously discussed. For this purpose we must first of all review the facts that led psychologists to conjecture an archetype of wholeness, i.e., the self. These are in the first place ?reams and visions; in the second place, products of active Imagination in which symbols of wholeness appear. The most 
3 Based on Radhakrishnan, The PrinciPal Upanishads, pp. 581f. 
4 Ibid., pp. 1128f. 
5 Hippolytus lived c. A.D. 1130. MonoYmos must therefore antedate him. 6 Psychological Types (1923 edn., pp. 47Iff.). 
223 

AION 
important of these are geometrical structures containing elements of the circle and quaternity; 7 namely, circular and spherical forms on the one hand, which can be represented either purely geometrically or as objects; and, on the other hand, quadratic figures divided into four or in the form of a cross. They can also be four objects or persons related to one another in meaning or by the way they are arranged. Eight, as a multiple of four, has the same significance. A special variant of the quaternity motif is the dilemma of 3 + 1. Twelve (3 X 4) seems to belong here as a solution of the dilemma and as a symbol of wholeness (zodiac, year). Three can be regarded as a relative totality, since it usually represents either a spiritual totality that is a product of thought, like the Trinity,8 or else an instinctual, chthonic one, like the triadic nature of the gods of the underworld-the "lower triad." Psychologically, however, three-if the context indicates that it refers to the self-should be understood as a defective quaternity or as a stepping-stone towards it.9 Empirically, a triad has a trinity opposed to it as its complement. The complement of the quaternity is unity.10 
	3511 	From the circle and quaternity motif is derived the symbol 
of the geometrically formed crystal and the wonder-working stone. From here analogy formation leads on to the city,u castle, church,12 house,13 and vesseJ.14 Another variant is the wheel (rota). The former motif emphasizes the ego's containment in the greater dimension of the self; the latter emphasizes the rotation which also appears as a ritual circumambulation. Psychologically, it denotes concentration on and preoccupation with a centre, conceived as the centre of a circle and thus formulated as a point. This leads easily enough to a relationship to the heavenly Pole and the starry bowl of heaven rotating round it. A parallel is the horoscope as the "wheel of birth." 
7 The circle has the character of wholeness because of its "perfect" fonn; the quatemity, becanse four is the minimum number of parts into which the circle may naturally be divided. 
8 Cf. "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity," pars. 1811ff. 9 Cf. "Spirit in Fairytales" pars. 425f., 436ff., and "Trinity," pars. 243ff. 
10 Five corresponds to the indistinguishability of quatemity and unity. 
11 [Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 138f., fig. 31.] 
12 Church built of living stones in the ShePherd of Hennas. [Psychological TypeS, 
ch. V, 4a.] 
	18 Golden Flower (19611 edn.), pp. 1I2, 36. 	14 Psychology and Alchemy, par. 338, 
224 

THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 
	553 	The image of the city, house, and vessel brings us to their 
content-the inhabitant of the city or house, and the water contained in the vessel. The inhabitant, in his turn, has a relationship to the quaternity, and to the fifth as the unity of the four. The water appears in modern dreams and visions as a blue expanse reflecting the sky, as a lake, as four rivers (e.g., Switzerland as the heart of Europe with the Rhine, Ticino, Rhone, and Inn, or the Garden of Eden with the Gihon, Pison, Hiddekel, and Euphrates), as healing water and consecrated water, etc. Sometimes the water is associated with fire, or even combined with it as fire-water (wine, alcohol). 
	354 	The inhabitant of the quadratic space leads to the human 
figure. Apart from the geometrical and arithmetical symbols, this is the commonest symbol of the self. It is either a god or a godlike human being, a prince, a priest, a great man, an historical personality, a dearly loved father, an admired example, the successful elder brother-in short, a figure that transcends the ego personality of the dreamer. There are corresponding feminine figures in a woman's psychology. 
	355 	Just as the circle is contrasted with the square, so the qua- 
ternity is Contrasted with the 3 + 1 motif, and the positive, beautiful, good, admirable, and lovable human figure with a daemonic, misbegotten creature who is negative, ugly, evil, despicable and an object of fear. Like all archetypes, the self has a paradoxical, antinomial character. It is male and female, old man and child, powerful and helpless, large and small. The self is a true "complexio oppositorum," 15 though this does not mean that it is anything like as contradictory in itself. It is quite possible that the seeming paradox is nothing but a reflection of the enantiodromian changes of the conscious attitude which can have a favourable or an unfavourable effect on the whole. The same is true of the unconscious in general, for its frightening figures may be called forth by the fear which the c~nscious mind has of the unconscious. The importance of conSCIOusness should not be underrated; hence it is advisable to relate the contradictory manifestations of the unconscious causally to the conscious attitude, at least in some degree. But consciousness should not be overrated either, for experience provides too 1~ A definition of God in Nicholas of Cusa. Cf. "The Psychology of the Transference," par. 537. 
225 

	360 	The "lower Adam" corresponds to the ordinary mortal man, 

Moses to the culture-hero and lawgiver, and thus, on a personalistic level, to the "father"; Zipporah, as the daughter of a king 17 Elenchos, V, 8, 2. 
AION 

many incontrovertible proofs of the autonomy of unconscious compensatory processes for us to seek the origin of these antinomies only in the conscious mind. Between the conscious and the unconscious there is a kind of "uncertainty relationship," because the observer is inseparable from the observed and always disturbs it by the act of observation. In other words, exact observation of the unconscious prejudices observation of the conscious and vice versa. 
	356 	Thus the self can appear in all shapes from the highest to the 
lowest, inasmuch as these transcend the scope of the ego personality in the manner of a daimonion. It goes without saying that the self also has its theriomorphic symbolism. The commonest of these images in modern dreams are, in my experience, the elephant, horse, bull, bear, white and black birds, fishes, and snakes. Occasionally one comes across tortoises, snails, spiders, and beetles. The principal plant symbols are the flower and the tree. Of the inorganic products, the commonest are the mountain and lake. 
	357 	Where there is an undervaluation of sexuality the self is 
symbolized as a phallus. Undervaluation can consist in an ordinary repression or in overt devaluation. In certain differentiated persons a purely biological interpretation and evaluation of sexuality can also have this effect. Any such conception overlooks the spiritual and "mystical" implications of the sexual instinct.16 These have existed from time immemorial as psychic facts, but are devalued and repressed on rationalistic and philosophical grounds. In all such cases one can expect an unconscious phallicism by way of compensation. A good example of this is the mainly sexualistic approach to the psyche that is to be found in Freud. 

2 
	S58 	Coming now to the Gnostic symbols of the self, we find that 
the Naassenes of Hippolytus lay most emphasis on the human images; of the geometrical and arithmetical symbols the most important are the quaternity, the ogdoad, the trinity, and unity. Here we shall give our attention mainly to the totality symbol of the quaternity, and above all to the symbol mentioned in 
16 Cf. Hurwitz, "Archetypische Motive in der chassidischen Mystik," ch. VI. 
226 

~59 

THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

section 6 of the last chapter, which I would like to call, for short, the Moses Quaternio. We shall then consider the second Naassene Quaternio, the one with the four rivers of Paradise, which I shall call the Paradise Quaternio. Though differently constituted, the two quaternios express roughly the same idea, and in what follows I shall try not only to relate them to one another psychologically, but also to bring out their connection with later (alchemical) quaternary structures. In the course of these investigations, we shall see how far the two quaternios are characteristic of the Gnostic age, and how far they can be correlated with the archetypal history of the mind in the Christian aeon. 

The quaternity in the Moses Quaternio 17 is evidently constructed according to the following schema: 

The Higher Adam 

Miriam, Moth".. Sister·Anima 

lethro, phy,ical and sPiritual father 

The Lower A dam 

The Moses Quatemio 

227 

____________                                    EVE 
as ordinary woman 

AION 
mE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF mE SELF 
	THE LOWER ADAM 	EVE 
	MOSES --------- 	ETHIOPIAN WOMAN 
]ETHRO, the heathen priest -- MIRIAM, the "white" leper 
	362 	Though nothing is said against ]ethro, "the great wise one," 
in the Bible story, yet as a Midianite priest he did not serve Yahweh and did not belong to the chosen people, but departs from them to his own country.19 He seems also to have borne the name Reguel ("friend of God") and to have helped Moses with his superior wisdom. He is, accordingly, a numinous personality, the embodiment of an archetype, obviously that of the "wise old man" who personifies the spirit in myth and folklore. The spirit, as I have shown elsewhere,20 has a dichotomous nature. Just as Moses in this case represents his own shadow by taking to wife the black daughter of the earth, so ]ethro, in his capacity as heathen priest and stranger, has to be included in the quaternio as the "lower" aspect of himself, with a magical and nefarious significance (though this is not vouched for in the text).21 
	363 	As I have already explained, the Moses Quaternio is an indi- 
vidual variant of the common marriage quaternio found in folklore.22 It could therefore be designated just as well with other mythical names. The basic schema of the cross-cousin marriage: 
HUSBAND ----- COUSIN AS WIFE 
	I 	I 
HUSBAND'S SISTER - WIFE'S BROTHER 
has numerous variants; for instance the sister can be replaced by the mother or the wife's brother by a fatherIike figure. But the incest motif remains a characteristic feature. Since the schema is a primary one characterizing the psychology of love relationships and also of the transference, it will, like all characterological schemata, obviously manifest itself in a "favourable" and an "unfavourable" form, for the relationships in question also exhibit the same ambivalence: everything a man does has a positive and a negative aspect. 
19 EXodus 18: 27. 
2() "Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales," pars. 4ooff. 
21 Since the whole Shadow Quaternio is a symmetrical construction, the "good Wise Man" must here be contrasted with a correspondingly dark, chthonic figure. 22 Cf. "Psychology of the Transference," pars. 42Sff. 
229 
and priest, to the "higher mother." For the ordinary man, these two represent the "royal pair," 18 which for Moses corresponds on the one hand to his "higher man," and on the other hand to his anima, Miriam. The "higher" man is synonymous with the "spiritual, inner" man, who is represented in the quaternio by ] ethro. Such is the meaning of the quaternio when seen from the standpoint of Moses. But since Moses is related to Jethro as the lower Adam, or ordinary man, is to Moses, the quaternio cannot be understood merely as the structure of Moses' personality, but must be looked at from the standpoint of the lower Adam as well. We then get the following quaternio: 
MOSES ---------------                                                     ZIPPORAH 
	as culture-hero 	as higher mother 
THE LOWER ADAM as ordinary man 
361 
From this we can see that the N aassene quaternio is in a sense unsymmetricaI, since it leads to a senarius (hexad) with an exclusively upward tendency: Jethro and Miriam have to be added to the above four as a kind of third storey, as the higher counterparts of Moses and Zipporah. We thus get a gradual progression, or series of steps leading from the lower to the higher Adam. This psychology evidently underlies the elaborate lists of Valentinian syzygies. The lower Adam or somatic man consequently appears as the lowest stage of all, from which there can be only an ascent. But, as we have seen, the four persons in the Naassene quaternio are chosen so skilfully that it leaves room not only for the incest motif [Jethro-Miriam], which is never lacking in the marriage quaternio, but also for the extension of the ordinary man's psychic structure downwards, towards the sub-human, the dark and evil side represented by the shadow. That is to say, Moses marries the "Ethiopian woman," and Miriam, the prophetess and mother-sister, becomes "Jeprous," which is clear proof that her relation to Moses has taken a negative turn. This is further confirmed by the fact that MiriaIll "spoke against" Moses and even stirred up his brother Aaron against him. Accordingly, we get the following senarius: 

The wise Zipporah

AION 
Anthropos(the higher Adam) 
	364 	The reader, therefore, should not let himself be put off by 
the somewhat scurrilous Gnostic nomenclature. The names are accidental, whereas the schema itself is universally valid. The same is true of the "Shadow Quaternio," for which I have kept the same names because the biography of Moses offers certain features that are well suited to illustrate the shadow. 
	365 	The lower senarius reaches its nadir not in the "lower 
Adam" but in his dark, theriomorphic prefiguration-the serpent who was created before man, or the Gnostic Naas. Accordingly we have the structures shown on the facing page. 
	366 	This schema is no idle parlour game, because the texts make 
it abundantly clear that the Gnostics were quite familiar with the dark aspect of their metaphysical figures, so much so that they caused the greatest offence on that account. (One has only to think of the identification of the good God with Priapus,23 or of the Anthropos with the ithyphallic Hermes.) It was, moreover, the Gnostics-e.g., Basilides-who exhaustively discussed the problem of evil (7rOO€1I TO KaKolI;-'whence comes evil?'). The serpentine form of the Nous and the Agathodaimon does not mean that the serpent has only a good aspect. Just as the Apophis-serpent was the traditional enemy of the Egyptian sungod, so the devil, "that ancient serpent," 24 is the enemy of Christ, the "novus SoL" The good, perfect, spiritual God was opposed by an imperfect, vain, ignorant, and incompetent demiurge. There were archontic Powers that gave to mankind a corrupt "chirographum" (handwriting) from which Christ had to redeem them.25 
	367 	With the dawn of the second millennium the accent shifted 
The higher Jethro
	
Man(the lower adam)
A. The Anthropos Quaternio 
The lower Jethero
	
23 In the gnosis of Justin. See Hippolytus, Elenchos, V, 26, 32 (Legge trans., I, p. 178): (, /l, a-ya06s et7n IIpta1ros (But the Good One is Priapus). 
24 Rev. 12: g. 

25 Coloss. 2 : 14: "Blotting out the handwriting of the decree that was against us, which was contrary to us. And he hath taken the same out of the way, fastening it to the cross" (DV). The handwriting is imprinted on the body. This view is confirmed by Orosius ("Ad Aurelium Augustum cornmonitoriurn de errore Priscillianistarum et Origenistarurn," p. 153), who says that in the opinion of Priscillian the soul, on descending through the spheres into birth, was caught by the powers of evil, and at the behest of the victor ("victoris principis") was cast into separate bodies, upon which a "handwriting" was written. The parts of the soul receive a divine chirograPhum, but the parts of the body are imprinted with the signs of the zodiac (caeli signa). 
23° 
       Serpent

B. The Shadow Quaternio 231 

AlON 
more and more towards the dark side. The demiurge became the devil who had created the world, and, a little later, alchemy began to develop its conception of Mercurius as the partly material, partly immaterial spirit that penetrates and sustains all things, from stones and metals to the highest living organisms. In the form of a snake he dwells inside the earth, has a body, soul, and spirit, was believed to have a human shape as the homunculus or homo altusJ and was regarded as the chthonic God.26 From this we can see clearly that the serpent was either a fOTerunner of man or a distant copy of the Anthropos, and how justified is the equation N aas = N ous = Logos = Christ = Higher Adam. The medieval extension of this equation towards the dark side had, as I have said, already been prepared by Gnostic phallicism. This appears as early as the fifteenth century in the alchemical Codex Ashburnham 1166,27 and in the sixteenth century Mercurius was identified with Hermes Kyllenios.28 
3 
	368 	It is significant that Gnostic philosophy found its continua- 
tion in alchemy.29 "Mater Alchimia" is one of the mothers of modern science, and modern science has given us an unparalleled knowledge of the "dark" side of matter. It has also penetrated into the secrets of physiology and evolution, and made the very roots of life itself an object of investigation. In this way the human mind has sunk deep into the sublunary world 
26 "The Spirit Mercurius," esp. pars. 271, 282, 289. 
27 See Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 131. 
28 In "Chrysopoeia" (in Gratarolus, Verae alchemiae artisque metollicae, 1561, pp. 26gff.), which Augurellus dedicated to Pope Leo X. It contains an invocation of the alma soror of Phoebus: 
"Tu quoque, nec coeptis Cylleni audacibus usquam Defueris, tibi nam puro de fonte perennis 
Rivulus argentum, vulgo quod vivere dicunt, Sufficit, et tantis praestat primordia rebus." 
(You too, Cyllenian, this bold enterprise 
Fail not, the stream from whose pure spring supplies The silver men call "quick," the primal state 
And first beginning of a work so great. [Trans. by A. S. B. Glover.]) 
29 In the Western Roman Empire there is a gap in this development, extending from the 3rd to about the 11 th cent., that is, to the time of the first translations from the Arabic. 
232 

THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 
of matter, thus repeating the Gnostic myth of the Nous, who, beholding his reflection in the depths below, plunged down and was swallowed in the embrace of Physis. The climax of this development was marked in the eighteenth century by the French Revolution, in the nineteenth century by scientific materialism, and in the twentieth century by political and social "realism," which has turned the wheel of history back a full two thousand years and seen the recrudescence of the despotism, the lack of individual rights, the cruelty, indignity, and slavery of the preChristian world, whose "labour problem" was solved by the "ergastulum" (convict-camp). The "transvaluation of all values" is being enacted before our eyes. 
	369 	The development briefly outlined here seems to have been 
anticipated in medieval and Gnostic symbolism, just as the Antichrist was in the New Testament. How this occurred I will endeavour to describe in what follows. We have seen that, as the higher Adam corresponds to the lower, so the lower Adam corresponds to the serpent. For the mentality of the Middle Ages and of late antiquity, the first of the two double pyramids, the A nthropos Quaternio J represents the world of the spirit, or metaphysics, while the second, the Shadow QuaternioJ represents sublunary nature and in particular man's instinctual disposition, the "flesh"-to use a Gnostic-Christian term-which has its roots in the animal kingdom or, to be more precise, in the realm of warm-blooded animals. The nadir of this system is the cold-blooded vertebrate, the snake,30 for with the snake the psychic rapport that can be established with practically all warmblooded animals comes to an end. That the snake, contrary to expectation, should be a counterpart of the Anthropos is corroborated by the fact-of especial significance for the Middle Ages-that it is on the one hand a well-known allegory of Christ, and on the other hand appears to be equipped with the gift of wisdom and of supreme spirituality.31 As Hippolytus says, the Gnostics identified the serpent with the spinal cord and the medulla. These are synonymous with the reflex functions. 
370• The second of these quaternios is the negative of the first; It is its shadow. By "shadow" I mean the inferior personality, the lowest levels of which are indistinguishable from the instinctll30 Synonymous with the dragon, since draco also means snake. 
31 !;<iiop 7rV€Vj.W.T'KwTar6p, 'the most spiritual animal.' 
233 

S71 
S72 

AION 
ality of an animal. This is a view that can be found at a very early date, in the idea of the 7rpourpV7J<; If;vx~, the 'excrescent soul' 82 of Isidorus.33 We also meet it in Origen, who speaks of the animals contained in man.34 Since the shadow, in itself, is unconscious for most people, the snake would correspond to what is totally unconscious and incapable of becoming conscious, but which, as the collective unconscious and as instinct, seems to possess a peculiar wisdom of its own and a knowledge that is often felt to be supernatural. This is the treasure which the snake (or dragon) guards, and also the reason why the snake signifies evil and darkness on the one hand and wisdom on the other. Its unrelatedness, coldness, and dangerousness express the instinctuality that with ruthless cruelty rides roughshod over all moral and any other human wishes and considerations and is therefore just as terrifying and fascinating in its effects as the sudden glance of a poisonous snake. 
In alchemy the snake is the symbol of Mercurius non vulgi, who was bracketed with the god of revelation, Hermes. Both have a pneumatic nature. The serpens Mercurii is a chthonic spirit who dwells in matter, more especially in the bit of original chaos hidden in creation, the massa confusa or globosa. The snake-symbol in alchemy points back to historically earlier images. Since the opus was understood by the alchemists as a recapitulation or imitation of the creation of the world, the serpent of Mercurius, that crafty and deceitful god, reminded them of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and therefore of the devil, the tempter, who on their own admission played all sorts of tricks on them during their work. Mephistopheles, whose "aunt is the snake," is Goethe's version of the alchemical familiar, Mercurius. Like the dragon, Mercurius is the slippery, evasive, poisonous, dangerous forerunner of the hermaphrodite, and for that reason he has to be overcome. 
For the Naassenes Paradise was a quaternity parallel with 32 In Valentinus the "appendages" are spirits indwelling in man. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, n, 20, 112 and 114 (trans. Wilson, n, pp. 64f.). 
83 Isidorus was the son of Basilides. See Clement of Alexandria, ibid., n, 20, US (Wilson, n, p. 65)' The "outgrowths" are animal souls, as of wolves, monkeys, lions, etc. 
114 In Levit. horn. V, 2 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, col. 450): "So when thou seest that thou hast all the things the world has, doubt not that thou hast within thee even the animals which are offered in sacrifice." 
234 

m 

THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 
the Moses quaternio and of similar meaning. Its fourfold nature consisted in the four rivers, Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Phrat.35 The serpent in Genesis is an illustration of the personified treenumen; hence it is traditionally represented in or coiled round the tree. It is the tree's voice, which persuades Eve-in Luther's version-that "it would be good to eat of the tree, and pleasant to behold that it is a lusty tree." In the fairytale of "The Spirit in the Bottle," Mercurius can likewise be interpreted as a treenumen.36 In the Ripley "Scrowle" Mercurius appears as a snake in the shape of a Melusina descending from the top of the Philosophical Tree ("tree of knowledge").37 The tree stands for the development and phases of the transformation process,38 and its fruits or flowers signify the consummation of the work.39 In the fairytale Mercurius is hidden in the roots of a great oak-tree, i.e., in the earth. For it is in the interior of the earth that the Mercurial serpent dwells. 
For the alchemists Paradise was a favourite symbol of the albedo,4° the regained state of innocence, and the source of its rivers is a symbol of the aqua permanens.41 For the Church Fathers Christ is this source,42 and Paradise means the ground of the soul from which the fourfold river of the Logos bubbles forth.43 We find the same symbol in the alchemist and mystic John Pordage: divine Wisdom is a "New Earth, the heavenly Land .... For from this Earth grew all the Trees of Life .... Thus did Paradise ... rise up from the Heart and Centre of this New Earth, and thus did the lost Garden of Eden flourish in greenness." 44 
	llli Euphrates. 	36 "The Spirit Mercurius," Part 1. 
	87 See Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 257. 	38 Ibid., par. S57. 
89 Ibid., fig. 122, and "The Philosophical Tree," pars. 402ff. 
40 Ripley, Cantilena, verse 28 [cf. Mysterium Coniunctionis, p. SI7], and Chym. ische Schrifften, p. 51; also Mylius, Phil. ref., p. 124. 
41 "A land to be watered with the clear water of paradise" (Holland m, "Fragmentum de lapide," Theatr. chem., n, p. 142). The "Tractatus Aristotelis ad Alexandrum Magnum (conscriptus et collectus a quodam Christiano Philosopho)," Theatr. chem., V,' p. 885, compares the "practica Aristotelis" with the water of paradise, which makes man "whole" (incolumem) and immortal: "From this Water all true Philosophers have had life and infinite riches." 
42 Didymus of Alexandria, De trinitate (Migne, P.G., vol. 39. col. 456). 
43St Ambrose, Explanationes in Psalmos, Ps. 45, 12 (Corp. ScriPt. Eccl. Lat., LXIV, p. 337). Cf. Rahner, "Flumina de ventre Christi," pp. 26gff. 
44 Sophia (1699), p. 9. 
235 

AlON 
THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 
Githon 
	
Euphrates
has to be put together from them.45 In the chaos the elements are not united, they are merely coexistent and have to be combined through the alchemical procedure. They are even hostile to one another and will not unite of their own accord. They represent, therefore, an original state of conflict and mutual repulsion. This image serves to illustrate the splitting up or unfolding of the original unity into the multiplicity of the visible world. Out of the split-up quaternity the opus puts together the unity of the laPis in the realm of the inorganic. As the filius macrocosmi and a living being, the laPis is not just an allegory but is a direct parallel of Christ 46 and the higher Adam, of the heavenly Original Man, of the second Adam (Christ), and of the serpent. The nadir of this third quaternio is therefore a further counterpart of the Anthropos. 
	S76 	As already mentioned, the constitution of the laPis rests on 
the union of the four elements,47 which in their turn represent an unfolding of the unknowable inchoate state, or chaos. This is the prima materia, the arcanum, the primary substance, which in Paracelsus and his followers is called the increatum and is regarded as coeternal with God-a correct interpretation of the Tehom in Genesis 1 : 2: "And the [uncreated] earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God [brooded] over the face of the waters." This primary substance is round (massa globosa, rotundumJ <TTOLX£iov <TTpOyyvAOV), like the world and the world-soul; it is in fact the world-soul and the world-substance in one. It is the "stone that has a spirit," 48 in modern parlance the most elementary building-stone in the architecture of matter, the atom, which is an intellectual model. The alchemists describe the 45 The laPis is made of the four elements, like Adam. The centre of the squared circle is the "mediator, making peace between the enemies or elements, so that they may love one another in a meet embrace" ("Tractatus aureus," Theatr. chem., IV, p. 691). 

46 Cf. the evidence for this in Psychology and Alchemy, "The Lapis-Christ Parallel." 

47 Mylius (Phil. ref., p. 15) identifies the elements that constitute the laPis with corpus, sPiritus, and anima: corpus is matter, earth, and sPiritus is the nodus (bond) animae et corporis, and therefore corresponds to fire. Water and air, which would properly characterize the anima, are also "spirit." Three of the elements are "moving:' one (earth) "unmoving." Cf. n. 89. infra. 

48 Quotation from Ostanes in Zosimos, "Sur l'art" (Berthelot, Alch. grecs, Ill, vi, 5). 
374 
4 

The snake symbol brings us to the images of Paradise, tree, and earth. This amounts to an evolutionary regression from the animal kingdom back to plants and inorganic nature, epitomized in alchemy by the secret. of matter, the lapis. Here the lapis is not to be understood as the end product of the opus but rather as its initial material. This arcane substance was also called laPis by the alchemists. The symbolism here described can be represented diagrammatically as another quaternio or double pyra- 
mid: 
Serpent 
Lapis
C. The Paradise Quaternio 
S75 

The laPis was thought of as a unity and therefore often stands for the prima materia in general. But just as the latter is a bit of the original chaos which was believed to be hidden somewhere in metals, particularly in mercury, or in other substances, and is not in itself a simple thing (as the name "massa confusa" shows), so too the laPis consists of the four elements or 
236 
237 

377 

AION 

"round element" now as primal water, now as primal fire, or as pneuma, primal earth, or "corpusculum nostrae sapientiae," the little body of our wisdom.49 As water or fire it is the universal solvent; as stone and metal it is something that has to be dissolved and changed into air (pneuma, spirit). 
This laPis symbolism J:an once more be visualized diagram- 
matically as a double pyramid: 
Lapis

AiT 

Rotundum 
D. The Lapis Quaternio 

Zosimos calls the rotundum the omega element (0), which probably signifies the head. 50 The skull is mentioned as the vessel of transformation in the Sabaean treatise "Platonis liber quartorum," 51 and the "Philosophers" styled themselves "children of the golden head," 52 which is probably synonymous with "filii sapientiae." The vas is often synonymous with the lapis, so that there is no difference between the vessel and its content; 
49 "Aurora consurgens," Art. auri!., I, p. 208. 
50 Cf. my remarks on the significance of the head in "Transformation Symbolism 
in the Mass," pars. 365ff. "Head" also means "beginning," e.g., "head of the Nile," 
	etc. 	51 Theatr. chem., V, p. 151. 	52 Berthelot, Ill, x, 1. 
238 

THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

in other words, it is the same arcanum.53 According to the old view the soul is round 54 and the vessel must be round too, like the heavens or the world.55 The form of the Original Man is round. Accordingly Dorn says that the vessel "should be made from a kind of squaring of the circle, so that the spirit and the soul of our material, separated from its body, may raise the body with them to the height of their own heaven." 56 The anonymous author of the scholia to the "Tractatus aureus" also writes about the squaring of the circle and shows a square whose corners are formed by the four elements. In the centre there is a small circle. The author says: "Reduce your stone to the four elements, rectify and combine them into one, and you will have the whole magistery. This One, to which the elements must be reduced, is that little circle in the centre of this squared figure. It is the mediator, making peace between the enemies or elements." 57 In a later chapter he depicts the vessel, "the true philosophical Pelican," 58 as shown on the next page.59 

53 "There is one stone, one medicine, one vessel, one method, one disposition" (Rosarium philosoPhorum, Art. auri!., n, 206). "In our water all modes of things are brought about .... In the said water they are made as in an artificial vessel, which is a mighty secret" (Mylius, Phil. re!., p. 245). "The Philosophical vessel is their water" (ibid., p. 33). This saying comes from de Hoghelande's treatise in Theatr. chem., I, p. 199. There we find: "Sulphur also is called by Lully the vessel of Nature," and Haly's description of the vessel as "ovum." The egg is content and container at once. The vas naturale is the aqua permanens and the "vinegar" of the Philosophers. ("Aurora consurgens," Part n, Art. auri!., I, p. 203.) 
54 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogue on Miracles, trans. Scott and Bland, Dist. I, chs. XXXII and XXXIV. 
55 In Olympiodorus the transforming vessel is the "spherical phial" or ISp'Yavov "u"l\,,,6v (circular apparatus). (Berthelot, II, iv, 44.) "The spagiric vessel is to be made after the likeness of the natural vessel. For we see that all heaven and the elements have the likeness of a spherical body" (Dorn, Theatr. chem., I, p. 430). "The end of all this master-work is, that the Philosophic Mercury be placed in the heavenly sphere" (ibid, p. 499)' Trevisanus calls the vessel the rotundum cubi/e, "round bridal bed" ("Liber de alchemia," Theatr. chem., I, p. 790). 
	56 "Congeries," Theatr. chem., I, pp. 574f. 	57 Ibid., IV, p. 691. 
58 "Nor is any other to be sought after in all the world." The Pelican is a distilling vessel, but the distillate, instead of dripping into the receiver, runs back into the belly of the retort. We could take this as illustrating the process of conscious realization and the reapplication of conscious insights to the unconscious. "It restored their former security of life to those once near to death," the author says of the Pelican, which, as we know, is an allegory of Christ. 
59 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, par. 167, n. 44. [Also "Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon," fig. B7.] 

2~a 

B 

D 
THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 
	379 	It is clear from these quotations that the vessel had a great 
and unusual significance.62 Philalethes, summing up the innumerable synonyms for Mercurius, says that Mercurius is not only the key to the alchemical art, and "that two-edged sword in the hand of the cherub who guards the way to the tree of life," but also "our true, hidden vessel, the Philosophic garden, wherein our Sun rises and sets." 63 This helps us to understand, more or less, the strange advice given by ]ohannes de Rupescissa: 
"Have a vessel made after the manner of a cherub, which is the figure of God, and have six wings, after the fashion of six arms, turning back on themselves; and above, a round head ... and put within this vessel the said burning water," etc.64 The definition of the cherub as "the figure of God" suggests that Rupescissa is referring here to the vision of Ezekiel, which was arranged in such a way that a horizontal section through it would produce a mandala divided into four parts. This, as I have already mentioned, is equivalent to the squaring of the circle, from which, according to one alchemical recipe, the vessel should be constructed. The mandala signifies the human or divine self, the totality or vision of God, as in this case is quite clear. Naturally a recipe of this sort can only be understood "philosophically," that is psychologically. It then reads: make the Hermetic vessel out of your psychic wholeness and pour into it the aqua permanens, or aqua doctrinae, one of whose synonyms is the vinum ardens (cf. Rupescissa's "burning water"). This would be a hint that the adept should "inwardly digest" and transform himself through the alchemical doctrine. 
	380 	In this connection we can also understand what the Aurora 
consurgens (Part II) means when it speaks of the vas naturale as the matrix: it is the "One in which there are three things, namely water, air, and fire. They are three glass alembics, in which the son of the Philosophers is begotten. Therefore they have named it tincture, blood, and egg." 65 The three alembics are an allusion to the Trinity. That this is in fact so can be seen from the illustration on page 249 of the 1588 edition of Pandora, where, beside the three alembics immersed in a great cookingpot, there stands the figure of Christ, with blood pouring from 
	62 Cf. Psycholof!:Y and Alchemy, par. 338. 	63 Mus. herm., p. 770. 
64 La Vertu et la propriete de la quinte essence (1581), p. 26. 6~ Art. aurif., I, p. lW3. 
378 
AlON 
He comments: "A is the inside, as it were the origin and source from which the other letters flow, and likewise the final goal to which all the others flow back, as rivers flow into the ocean or into the great sea." This explanation is enough to show that the vessel is nothing else but a mandala, symbolizing the self or the higher Adam with his four emanations (like Horus with his four sons). The author calls it the "Septenarius magicus occultus" (the hidden magic number, seven).60 Likewise Maria 
c 
E 
the Prophetess says: "The Philosophers teach everything except the Hermetic vessel, because that is divine and is hidden from the Gentiles by the Lord's wisdom; and they who know it not, know not the true method, because of their ignorance of the vessel of Hermes." Theobald de Hoghelande adds: "Senior says that the vision thereof is more to be sought after than [knowledge of] the Scriptures," Maria the Prophetess says: "This is the vessel of Hermes, which the Stoics hid, and it is no nigromantic vessel, but is the measure of thy fire [mensura ignis tuiJ."61 
60 That is, counting the letters F and G (not included in the diagram). which signify Above and Below. 
61 Art. aurif., I. p. 324; Theatr. chem., I, p. 199; Art. aurif·, I, p. 323. 
240 
241 

AION 
the lance wound in his breast ("£lumina de ventre Christi"I).66 The round Hermetic vessel in which the mysterious transformation is accomplished is God himself, the (Platonic) world-soul and man's own wholeness. It is, therefore, another counterpart of the Anthropos, and at the same time the universe in its smallest and most material form. So it is easy to see why the first attempts to construct a model of the atom took the planetary system as a prototype. 
5 
	381 	The quaternity is an organizing schema par excellence, 
something like the crossed threads in a telescope. It is a system of co-ordinates that is used almost instinctively for dividing up and arranging a chaotic multiplicity, as when we divide up the visible surface of the earth, the course of the year, or a collection of individuals into groups,67 the phases of the moon, the temperaments, elements, alchemical colours, and so on. Thus, when we come upon a quaternio among the Gnostics, we find in it an attempt, more or less conscious, to organize the chaotic medley of numinous images that poured in upon them. As we have seen, the arrangement took a form that derives from the primitive cross-cousin marriage, namely the marriage quaternio.68 This differs from the primitive form in that the sisterexchange marriage has sloughed off its biological character, the sister's husband no longer being the wife's brother but another close relative (such as the wife's father in the Moses Quaternio), or even a stranger. The loss of the cousin- and brother-attribute is compensated as a rule by magical qualities, such as more exalted rank, magical powers, and the like, both in the case of the husband's sister and the wife's brother. That is to say, an anima-animus projection takes place. This modification brings with it a great cultural advance, for the very fact of projection points to a constellation of the unconscious in the husband-wife relationship, which means that the marriage has become psychologically complicated. It is no longer a state of mere bio- 
66 "Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon," fig. B4. 67 Marriage classes and settlements. 
68 "Psychology of the Transference," pars. 433ff. [Cf. Layard, Stone Men of Malekula, chs. 5 and 6, and "The Incest Taboo and the Virgin Archetype," pp. 266ff.-EDITORS.] 
~4a 

THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 
logical and social coexistence, but is beginning to turn into a conscious relationship. This happens when the original crosscousin marriage becomes obsolete as a result of the further differentiation of marriage classes into a six-, eight-, or twelve-class system. The cause of the activation of the unconscious that goes hand in hand with this development is the regression of the endogamous tendency-the "kinship libido"-which can no longer find adequate satisfaction owing to the increasing strangeness of the marriage partner.69 
	1182 	Besides the marriage quaternio, the Gnostics also used the 
quaternity of the rivers of Paradise as a means of organizing their numerous symbols. There are thus two (compensatory) attempts, in the symbols we have listed, to organize the apparently disconnected images. This accords with our experience of the ~ries of pictures produced during active imagination and in chaotic psychic states. In both cases quaternity symbols appear from time to time.70 They signify stabilization through order as opposed to the instability caused by chaos, and have a compensatory meaning. 
	11811 	The four quaternios depicted above are first and foremost an 
attempt to arrange systematically the almost limitless wealth of symbols in Gnosticism and its continuation, alchemy. But such an arrangement of principles also proves useful for understanding the individual symbolism of modern dreams. The images we encounter in this field are even more varied, and so confusing in their complexity that some kind of organizing schema is absolutely essential. As it is advisable to proceed historically, I have taken the Moses Quaternio as a starting point, because it derives directly from the primitive schema of the cross-cousin marriage. Naturally this quaternio has only a paradigmatic significance. One could base the system just as easily on any other marriage quaternio, but not on any other quaternity, such as, for instance, Borus and his four sons. This quaternity is not aboriginal enough, for it misses out the antagonistic, feminine element.71 
69 "Psychology of the Transference," par. 438. 
70 Case material in Psychology and Alchemy, part n. Triadic symbols also occur, but they are rarer. 
7.1 The Gnostic quaternio is naturally later than the Horus quaternity in point of tllne, but psychologically it is older, because in it the feminine element reassumes its rightful place, as is not the case with the patriarchal Horus quaternio. 
243 

AION 
It is most important that just the extreme opposites, masculinefeminine and so on, should appear linked together. That is why the alchemical pairs of opposites are linked together in quaternities, e.g., warm-cold, dry-moist. Applied to the Moses Quaternio, the following schema of relationships would result: 
Whereas the first double pyramid, the Anthropos Quaternio, corresponds to the Gnostic model, the second one is a construction derived psychologically from the first, but based on the data contained in the Biblical text used by the Gnostics. The psychological reasons for constructing a second quaternio have already been discussed. That the second must be the "shadow" of the first is due to the fact that the lower Adam, the mortal man, possesses a chthonic psyche and is therefore not adequately expressed by a quaternity supraordinate to him. If he were, he would be an unsymmetrical figure, just as the higher Adam is unsymmetrical and has to be complemented by a subordinate quaternity related to him like his shadow or his darker reflection. 
Now just as the Anthropos Quaternio finds its symmetrical complement in the lower Adam, so the lower Adam is balanced by the subordinate Shadow Quaternio, constructed after the pattern of the upper one. The symmetrical complement of the lower Adam is the serpent. The choice of this symbol is justified firstly by the well-known association of Adam with the snake: it is his chthonic daemon, his familiar spirit. Secondly, the snake is the commonest symbol for the dark, chthonic world of ~nstinct. It may-as frequently happens-be replaced by an eqUlValent cold-blooded animal, such as a dragon, crocodile, or fish. 
244 

THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF
But the snake is not just a nefarious, chthonic being; it is also, as we have already mentioned, a symbol of wisdom, and hence of light, goodness, and healing.72 Even in the New Testament it is simultaneously an allegory of Christ and of the devil, just as we have seen that the fish was. Similarly the dragon, which for us has only a negative meaning, has a positive significance in China, and sometimes in Western alchemy too. The inner polarity of the snake-symbol far exceeds that of man. It is overt, whereas man's is partly latent or potential. The serpent surpasses Adam in cleverness and knowledge and can outwit him. She is older than he, and is evidently equipped by God with a superhuman intelligence, like that son of God who took over the role of Satan.78 
	386 	Just as man culminates above in the idea of a "light" and 
good God, so he rests below on a dark and evil principle, traditionally described as the devil or as the serpent that personifies Adam's disobedience. And just as we symmetrized man by the serpent, so the serpent has its complement in the second Naassene quaternio, or Paradise Quaternio. Paradise takes us into the world of plants and animals. It is, in fact, a plantation or garden enlivened by animals, the epitome of all the growing things that sprout out of the earth. As serpens mercurialis} the snake is not only related to the god of revelation, Hermes, but, as a vegetation numen, calls forth the "blessed greenness," all the budding and blossoming of plant life.74 Indeed, this serpent actually dwells in the interior of the earth and is the pneuma that lies hidden in the stone.75 
	387 	The symmetrical complement of the serpent, then, is the 
stone as representative of the earth. Here we enter a later developmental stage of the symbolism, the alchemical stage, whose central idea is the laPis. Just as the serpent forms the lower opposite of man, so the laPis complements the serpent. It corresponds, on the other hand, to man, for it is not only represented 
72 Like, for instance, the Aesculapian and Agathodaimon serpent. 
78Sch" f "n' G 
ar , le estalt des Satans im Alten Testament," p. 151. 
74"0 blessed greenness, which givest birth to all things, whence know that no v~getable and no fruit appears in the bud but that it hath a green colour. Like. wls.e know that the generation of this thing is green, for which reason the PhilOSOphers have called it a bud." (Ros. phil., Art. aurif., 11, p. 220.) 
7li Cf. the Ostanes quotation in Zosimos, Psychology and A.lchemy, par. 405. 
245 

AION 
in human form but even has "body, soul, and spirit," is an homunculus and, as the texts show, a symbol of the self. It is, however, not a human ego but a collective entity, a collective soul, like the Indian hiranyagarbha, 'golden seed.' The stone is the "father-mother" of the metals, an hermaphrodite. Though it is an ultimate unity, it is not an elementary but a composite unity that has evolved. For the stone we could substitute all those "thousand names" which the alchemists devised for their central symbol, but nothing different or more fitting would have been said. 
	!l88 	This choice of symbol, too, is not arbitrary, but is docu- 
mented by alchemical literature from the first to the eighteenth century. The laPis is produced, as we have already seen, from the splitting and putting together of the four elements, from the rotundum. The rotundum is a highly abstract, transcendent idea, which by reason of its roundness 76 and wholeness refers to the Original Man, the Anthropos. 
	389 	Accordingly our four double pyramids would arrange them- 
selves in a circle and form the well-known uroboros. As the fifth stage, the rotundum would then be identical with the first; that is to say, the heavy darkness of the earth, metal, has a secret relationship to the Anthropos. That is obvious in alchemy, but occurs also in the history of religion, where the metals grow from Gayomart's blood.77 This curious relationship is explained by the identity of the lowest, most material thing with the highest and most spiritual, which we have already met in the interpretation of the serpent as a chthonic and at the same time the "most spiritual" animal. In Plato the rotundum is the worldsoul and a "blessed God." 78 
76 A hint that rotation may be a principle of matter. 
77 According to the report of the Damdad-Nashk (Reitzenstein and Schader, Studien %Urn antiken Syncretisrnus aus Iran und Griechenland, p. 18). Gayomart is the Original Man in the theosophical version of Zarathustra's system. Yima, on the other hand, is the Original Man of ancient Aryan legend. His name is Yimo ksha~to, 'the shining Yima.' According to the Mainyo-i-Khard, the metals were created from his body. (Kohut, "Die talmudisch-midraschische Adamssage," pp. 68, 70.) In the Bundahish, Gayomart's body consisted of metals. (Christensen, "Le Premier Homme et le premier roi dans l'histoire legendaire des Iraniens," p. 21.) 7,8 [Cf. "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity," par. 185'EDITORS.] 
246 

THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 
6 
	390 	We shall now try to condense the argument of the previous 
chapter and represent it graphically. Vertically arranged, our schema looks like this: 
An,A,o,o, 
In the diagram I have emphasized the point of greatest tension between the opposites, namely the double significance of the serpent, which occupies the centre of the system. Being an allegory of Christ as well as of the devil, it contains and symbolizes the strongest polarity into which the Anthropos falls when he descends into Physis. The ordinary man has not reached this point of tension: he has it merely in the unconscious, i.e., in the serpent. 79 In the laPis) the counterpart of man, 
79 Most people do not have sufficient range of consciousness to become aware of the OPPOsites inherent in human nature. The tensions they generate remain for the most part unconscious, but can appear in dreams. Traditionally, the snake stands for the vulnerable spot in man: it personifies his shadow, i.e., his weakness and unconsciousness. The greatest danger about unconsciousness is proneness to Suggestion. The effect of suggestion is due to the release of an unconscious 
247 

This arrangement shows the stronger tension between anthropos-rotundum and serpens on the one hand, and the lesser 
dynamic, and the more unconscious this is, the more effective it will be. Hence the ever-widening split between conscious and unconscious increases the danger of psychic infection and mass psychosis. With the loss of symbolic ideas the bridge to the unconscious has broken down. Instinct no longer affords protection against unsound ideas and empty slogans. Rationality without tradition and without a 
basis in instinct is proof against no absurdity. 
248 
AlON 
the opposites are so to speak united, but with a visible seam or suture as in the symbol of the hermaphrodite. This mars the idea of the laPis just as much as the all-too-human element mars Homo saPiens. In the higher Adam and in the rotundum the opposition is invisible. But presumably the one stands in absolute opposition to the other, and if both are identical as indistinguishable transcendental entities, this is one of those paradoxes that are the rule: a statement about something meta- 
physical can only be antinomial. 
The arrangement in the uroboros gives the following 
picture: 

Anlhropo.-Rotunaum 
Se 

392 
393 

TIlE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF TIlE SELF 
tension between homo and laPis on the other, expressed by the distance of the points in question from one another. The arrows indicate the descent into Physis and the ascent towards the spiritual. The lowest point is the serpent. The lapis, however, though of decidedly material nature, is also a spiritual symbol, while the rotundum connotes a transcendent entity symbolized by the secret of matter and thus comparable to the concept of the atom. The antinomial development of the concepts is in keeping with the paradoxical nature of alchemy. 
The lapis quaternity, which is a product of alchemical gnosis, brings us to the interesting physical speculations of alchemy. In the Scrutinium chymicum (1687) of Michael Maier (1568-1622), there is a picture so of the four elements as four different stages of fire (Plate I). 
As the picture shows, the four spheres are filled with fire. 
The author comments with the following verses: 
Naturae qui imitaris opus, tibi quattuor orbes Quaerendi, interius quos levis ignis agat. 
Imus Vulcanum referat, bene monstret at alter Mercurium, Lunam tertius orbis habet: 
Quartus, Apollo, tuus, naturae auditur et ignis, Ducat in arte manus illa catena tuas. 
From this we learn that the lowest sphere corresponds to Vulcan, the earthly (?) fire; the second to Mercurius, the vegeta~ tive life-spirit; the third to the moon, the female, psychic principle; and the fourth to the sun, the male, spiritual principle. It is evident from Maier's commentary that he is concerned on the one hand with the four elements and on the other with the four kinds of fire which are responsible for producing different states of aggregation. His ignis elementalis re et nomine would, according to its place in the sequence, correspond to Vulcan; the fire of Mercurius to air; the third fire to water and the moon; and the fourth, which would correspond to the sun, he calls "terreus" (earthly). According to Ripley, whom Maier quotes, the ignis elementalis is the fire "which lights wood"; it mUst therefore be the ordinary fire. The sun-fire, on the other hand, seems to be the fire in the earth, which today we would 
80 Emblema XVII, p. 49. 
249