How did Carl Jung's understanding of pagan symbolism and archetypes influence his interpretation of Christianity, and what insights can be drawn from his perspective on the relationship between these two religious traditions?
>>23817393I personally think that it was something archetypal brewing in the Greco-Roman unconscious. We see several different examples of Christ-like figures emerge out of the syncretic milieu of the Hellenistic period (Hermes Trismegustus, Mithras, Serapis, etc.) alongside a growing apocalypticism in Judaism that prepared the way for several itinerant messianic teachers. In addition to this we have the development of middle-Platonism and its ideas of a "hypercosmic sun," or a Sun beyond the Sun.So I think the syncretic nature of Greco-Roman religion allowed for this "hypercosmic sun" archetype to attach itself to a real person---Jesus is one example of this, Apollonius of Tyana is another. Jesus, like Buddha, successfully integrated the unconscious and became a whole person, later becoming a symbol of the Self. The reason it "won" over Paganism in Europe probably has more to do with the imperial and colonial influence of Rome as a political power rather than a spontaneous acceptance of it by the European pagan unconscious---in fact, the European unconscious never fully accepted it and Christianity never really "won." The struggle of the Pagan influence in the unconscious continues even into the modern age (WWII and the rise of esoteric Nazism could be understood as an awakening of Wotan in the German collective unconscious, as described by Jung), and the European pagan unconscious found other ways of expressing itself during the Middle Ages and the Rennaisance (we see this when we look at Arthurian legend and the romance genre, the sagas, the Hermetic revivals of the 12th century and 15th century, etc.)
>>23817397Late Romans were increasingly beginning to feel like we have something within us that is infinitely valuable, and yet totally unconnected to this world. Man himself was becoming increasingly separate from nature. No longer was Man a natural phenomenon like everything else that lives, but something set apart, with an otherworldly nature not shared by animals or even the gods. Paganism is inherently social, but now Man needed a God with whom he could be alone, so that he could develop his burgeoning Soul. It is in this context that the cults of Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Mithraism, Manichaeism, and ultimately Christianity swept across the Empire. Paganism's greatest strength is that it is wholly natural, the organic expression of a people's spirituality. When a person is alienated from their pagan tradition, their soul still needs release and expression, but it can no longer be found in the physical world, so people had to turn to transcendental religions. Man was suddenly aware of himself as a spiritual being, so his religion needed not only to provide a home for his soul, but for his intellect as well. Christianity proved most successful at this, spreading most rapidly among the dispossessed, women slaves, refugees, who had no living spiritual tradition to call their own. Christ, as an archetype, provides a spiritual, intellectual, and physical home for the human Soul, by bringing God and Man into a single figure, reconciling Heaven and Earth. The reconciliation of Heaven and Earth is a very ancient archetype, going at least back to the Sumerians. Many religions had tried to bridge the gap between man and God (most notably by simply erasing the distinction between them, as in the mystery schools or the Vedanta), but the archetype of the God-man finds its greatest expression in the figure of Christ. The problem with the mystery/vedanta schools is that their expression of the God-man is arcane, impenetrable, requiring rigorous initiation and years of study and meditation to understand. Christ, meanwhile, can make sense to even an illiterate slave. The God-man archetype has finally attained a form comprehensible to normal people, and can no longer be gate-kept by secret societies or the priestly caste. Through Christ, normal, everyday people can have meaningful, transformative encounters with the God-man archetype, which was previously the closely-guarded secret of the initiates.
>>23817685the various pagan gods and spirits are recast as angels. If you look at the hierarchy of angels, you see spiritual beings in charge of elements, planets, and seasons, just like the Olympians. Some angels guard kingdoms like patron deities, some serve as messengers, and some are assigned to a specific person just like the "geniuses" of Classical paganism. Ancestral gods were easily transformed into saints, and troublesome gods became demons. All of nature was crying out for her king to redeem the earth, and all the world prefigures Christ. In all the great religions of the ancient world, you see a confused mess of forms and spirits and ideas, just waiting for their king to arrive and set them all in order so that earth can actualized into heaven. In much the same way, in the immature mind, there is a confused mess of complexes and traumas and desires, waiting to be set in order by the Self in order to become a self-actualized integrated person.
