Carl Jung, "Seven Sermons to the Dead," Necessity of new God

Hermitas

TL;DR: Jung had some interesting visions in which a character named "Philemon" preached to the unfulfilled, wandering dead. Some of the things Philemon explained to Jung seem to reflect the arrival of the New Aeon, at least in cause if not perfectly in substance. This was in 1916.

Some background on the text: gnosis.org/library/7Sermons.htm

When all the clamor had passed, I turned to Philemon and exclaimed:

"Pity us, wisest one! You take from men the Gods to whom they could pray. You take alms from the beggar, bread from the hungry, fire from the freezing."

Philemon answered and said, "My son, these dead have had to reject the belief of the Christians and therefore they can pray to no God. So should I teach them a God in whom they can believe and to whom they can pray? That is precisely what they have rejected. Why did they reject it? They had to reject it because they could not do otherwise. And why did they have no other choice? Because the world, without these men knowing it, entered into that month of the great year where one should believe only what one knows.

That is difficult enough, but it is also a remedy for the long sickness that arose from the fact that one believed what one did not know. I teach them the God whom both I and they know of without being aware of him, a God in whom one does not believe and to whom one does not pray, but of whom one knows."

. . . .

"It appears," I replied, "as if you teach a terrible and dreadful God beyond measure, to whom good and evil and human suffering and joy are nothing."

"My son," said Philemon, "did you not see that these dead had a God of love and rejected him? Should I teach them a loving God? They had to reject him after already having long since rejected the evil God whom they call the devil. Therefore they must know a God to whom everything created is as nothing, because he himself is the creator, and everything created, and the destruction of everything created.

Have they not rejected a God who is a father, a lover, good and beautiful? One whom they thought to have particular qualities and a particular being? Therefore I must teach a God to whom nothing can be attributed, who has all qualities and therefore none, because only I and they can know such a God."

Carl Jung. The Red Book: A Reader's Edition. pp. 518-519.

Two things:

It seems to me that Philemon characterizes the New Aeon very well as humanity entering "into that month of the great year where one should believe only what one knows." Your thoughts?
In context, Philemon is describing the gnostic supreme deity "Abraxas," whom Jung described elsewhere by saying, "...Abraxas, a made-up name meaning three hundred and sixty five . . . He was a time god." To me, Abraxas would seem to be the symbol needed if the three Thelemic deities were united into one deity, representing all... and nothing. Maybe some points of discussion there - a way of saying that in a more precisely Thelemic way. Your thoughts?

Anyway, it's a fascinating read. I woke up early this morning and was perusing my underlined sections over coffee. There are passages in it that floor me.

Hermitas

I think this is a really interesting psychoanalysis of the New Aeon.

Only instead of the qualityless Abraxas, we have a trinity that may be reduced to personification and even nothing at all.

Hego

I didn't spot any reference to the new aeon but in his book Mysterium Coniunctionis He also describes a personal God:

...For the spirit alone penetrates all things, even the most solid bodies. Thus the catholicity of religion, or of the true Church, consists not in a visible and bodily gathering together of men, but in the invisible, spiritual concord and harmony of those who believe devoutly and truly in the one Jesus Christ. Whoever attaches himself to a particular church outside this King of Kings, who alone is the shepherd of the true spiritual church, is a sectarian, a schismatic, and a heretic. For the Kingdom of God cometh not with observation, but is within us, as our Saviour himself says in the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke...
... “But you will ask, where then are those true Christians, who are free from all sectarian contagion?” They are “neither in Samaria, nor in Jerusalem, nor in Rome, nor in Geneva, nor in Leipzig,” but are scattered everywhere through the world, “in Turkey, in Persia, Italy, Gaul, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, England, America, and even in farthest India..."

I also found many kabbalistic references in that book. His collected works are full of references from rosicrucians and alchemical studies.

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