The Darkening Spirit: Jung, spirituality, religion

Our failure to give the devil his due has meant that we have been forced to experience the dark side of the divine in literal and horrific ways, in war, violence, upheaval and disintegration.

‘religious statements without exception have to do with the reality of the psyche and not with the reality of physis’.

The real tension between depth psychology and Christianity is that whereas theology idealises the Christ figure as the sole agent of redemption, psychology argues that every man and woman must realise this new wholeness in his or her own way.

Jung suggests that there is need of a second ‘coming’, not of Christ as such, but of his adversary, the antagonist.

The dark side needs acknowledgement, and it is hardly going to get it from the Christian story, now that its identification with an image of light and goodness is set in stone.

For Jung, salvation means that the personality becomes involved in the reconciliation of the opposites and the recognition of the Self as the master of life.

‘No! You will not die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil’. The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and that it was desirable for the knowledge it could give.

masculine =

Soul generates meaning, turns events into experiences and gives us a reason for being.