FROM WORSHIP TO APPRENTICESHIP:
 GODS AND ARCHETYPES AS THRESHOLD GUARDIANS
 

If you were a god or God, would you want childlike worshipers? Or would you rather be in conversation with responsible adults?

Craig Chalquist
 Chalquist.com

May 3rd, 2022

“The fault, dear Brutus,” declares Shakespeare’s Cassius, “is not in our stars, / But in ourselves…” We have all heard this bit from Julius Caesar. We will take our guidance below from the oft-omitted rest of the statement: “…that we are underlings."[1] 

A second point of departure finds inspiration from “A Ritual to Each Other,” a poem by William Stafford, which begins:

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.[2]

From the standpoint of the Corpus Hermeticum, a key body of writings in the Hermetic tradition, following any god home is problematic, and still more so for Gnosticism, its biblical offshoot. C. G. Jung knew this, of course; his form of depth psychology is basically an updated Gnosticism and, later, Hermeticism translated into psychological language.[3] Jung insisted that when something numinous crosses our path, it is up to us to decide how best to face it. His Red and Black Books contain numerous examples of his standing his ground with Soul, Salome, Elijah, Philemon, and other imaginal beings he would later identify as archetypal.

To some extent, James Hillman eroded this criticality by insisting on reverence toward mythic figures such as gods (archetypes, for him). In fact, he repeatedly called for a rerooting of psychology in mythology, Greek in particular. Oddly, Jung’s more monotheistic approach is more aligned in some ways with the pagan philosophy of Hermeticism than Hillman’s calls for a “pagan” psychology. Even so, Hillman’s Archetypal Psychology provides useful ideas for moving beyond obedient worship into a more Hermetic stance of regarding the gods as mentors to learn from and move beyond.

Jung and Hillman on Facing the Gods

For Jungian depth psychology, gods are archetypes: basic forms, themes, or patterns that shape our experience. Hero, Transformation, Birth, Death, and the Divine (among many others) are not so much images as templates each of us fills with our own personal and cultural material: heroic Gilgamesh in one culture, Cuchulainn, Thor, Yu, or Herakles in others. Archetypal images appear in myths, dreams, fantasies, moods, art, film, and religious iconography, often as objects of worship.

For Hillman, archetypes are not reducible to biology, culture, or mental maps. They are foundational structures of the imagination which express themselves powerfully in myth. As such, they are not what we see so much as how we see.[4] Hillman, for example, often writes from the altar of tricky Hermes: “As long as you follow the Bible and say, ‘Man is created in the image of God,’ then the question is: What about bugs?”[5] 

When archetypal images arrive, whatever their vehicle, from Hillman’s perspective they invite creative responses by taking their cue from the images themselves. Where Jung recommends exploring, interpreting, and integrating what they offer, Hillman advises refining, elaborating, and above all deliteralizing, thereby allowing whatever visits to speak in its own terms: Mars not as a literal war god, but as a mood, style, or frame of mind. The question is then not what we want from Mars, but what “he” wants by showing up.

For Jung, the goal of image work is healing and wholeness, both results of the path of individuation: becoming an individual. For Hillman, the goal is allowing the god to speak more fully and specifically whether or not any healing results. Through reflection, rhetoric, cultural education, and artistic appreciation, we tend the pantheons in our governing fantasies in acts of metaphoric soul-making.

So far, both Hillman and Jung sound thoroughly Hermetic: the philosophical tradition begun in first-century Alexandria and focused on esoteric knowing, instructional storytelling, contemplative praxis, and imagination as a source of wisdom. But where for Jung individuation is a spiritually consequential path (and Spirit itself an archetype), Hillman regards spirit as a psychology of metaphysics, objectivity, theology, order, number, permanency, and self-defensive logic.[6] By the logic of his own approach, “spirit” in this sense sounds less Hermetic than Saturnian, a psychology Hillman often attacks but occasionally sympathizes with.

For Hillman, each “god” brings its own ethical style. Although Jung would likely agree, he underlines the obligations of the conscious self when confronted by an archetypal event:

The images of the unconscious place a great responsibility upon a man. Failure to understand them, or a shirking of ethical responsibility, deprives him of his wholeness and imposes a painful fragmentariness on his life.[7]

Jung offers an example of shouldering this responsibility when he describes being in session when a beetle taps at the window.[8] He amplifies the beetle as image by linking it to the scarab Khepri, the Egyptian (and Hermetic) god of rebirths and dawnings; but, stepping beyond image-tending, he gives the beetle to his patient to encourage her to abandon the arid rationalizations that have kept her frozen. By doing this, he contravenes Hillman’s rule to leave dream (and dreamlike) images in their Underworld context on the window’s other side rather than linking them to dayworld practicalities.[9] 

Hillman claims not to be reviving polytheistic religion, which, like any religion, involves faith, belief, and literalism. The reverent pray to their gods; archetypalists imagine them, and imagine through them. Nevertheless, Hillman’s manner when discussing archetypal visitations tends toward religious reverence and submission. In the film Surfing LA, for example, Hillman insists enthusiastically that anyone living on an earthquake fault can be ripped down at any time and is “completely in the hands of the gods.”[10] But even people in the hands of the gods can store food and water. As a lifelong Californian, I have lived through many earthquakes, some quite powerful; even when being tossed about we have choices to make.

In the same film, Hillman riffs emotionally on the myth of Pandora, which in his interpretation makes Hope an evil—“see, that’s the smart thing!”—because it’s the one entity who remains in the box (it’s actually a jar) when all other evils rush forth and fill the world. The same disdain for the obligations brought by hope surfaced at an ecology conference where, asked about the possible demise of civilization, he replied that the best we can do is “celebrate the descent,” like passengers and crew on the Titanic. This prompted psychologist Mary Gomes to reply, “Well, some of us want to learn how to swim.”[11] 

I’ve also heard an archetypal practitioner say in an administrative meeting that the goal of hiring more faculty of color was “taking diversity too literally.” In the presence of this kind of intellectual solvent, any attempt to improve or better anything turns to mush.

What does Hermeticism say about such passivity?

Archontic Underlings

Heimarmone is a Hellenistic concept that refers to fate, especially that bestowed by stellar configurations. Such astrological determinism matches the religious brand in which all is written by the gods or by God.

The Hermeticists and Gnostics pushed back against heimarmone by insisting on the human potential for self-liberation. In ancient Gnostic tales, various salvific figures, including Jesus, pointed the way by muting the power of the tyrannical planets. Jesus also armed his followers with ciphers for use during the visionary journey past archons stationed in various spheres. The initiant needed to know how to see through the archon to its essence, then speak the correct response to get by. “Seeing through” is also Hillman’s term for imagining one’s way past a surface event or issue to its archetypal background.[12] “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12).[13] 

Hermetic commentators saw celestial powers as “governors” rather than archons: generally benevolent powers guiding the spiritual quest. They were to be made use of, each holding sacred wisdom to share and even overseeing various parts of the body and their health. The Hermetic understanding was that what we now know as planetary transits affect only the physical aspect of life unless we fail to understand them, in which case their influence grows ominously pervasive. The idea is to turn the limitations they impose into useful powers.[14]

When the infamous Mercury retrograde occurs and one’s main computer malfunctions, the uninitiated may feel it as a loss of identity and a disaster, whereas the Hermetic adapts by reverting to a reflective mode of being. Neither Gnostic nor Hermetic would retreat into passivity and leave it all up to the moods of the gods. Hermeticists read their horoscopes not to anticipate their future, but to master it.[15]

Of course, passivity in the face of the divine brings significant emotional comforts. It relieves us of the responsibility to act courageously and preserve what we can. Why get riled about what is out of our control to begin with? Behind the “in the hands of the gods” attitude hides an obedience-to-authority conservatism. As William James said about philosophies like Hegel’s, they encourage people “to see the world good rather than to make it good.”[16] For all his emphasis on moral obligation, Jung discouraged activism and social outreach among his analysts.[17] Jungians like Hillman have reduced such efforts to literalism, to being unpsychological.

If the gods do not act Hermetically as threshold guardians to learn from and then bypass, we never have to get painfully initiated. Instead, we remain unchanged.

Passivity keeps one in the child position. “In the hands of the gods” tends to mean, psychologically, in the hands of the parents. The Gnostics referred to archontic powers as Rulers; the chief among them, the demiurge Ialdabaoth, bragged about being the father of the entire Creation. Under archontic influence, “lest ye become as children,” an obvious summons to a fresh approach, is then downgraded into an excuse for lapsing into childish dependency.

By casting archons as oppressive authorities wearing Roman military uniforms, Gnostic artisans underlined the latent power drive in so much religious aspiration. When Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola burned pagan books, destroyed art, and enforced moral fundamentalism, most of the Florentine Platonists joined his crusade. Marsilio Ficino, translator of the Corpus Hermeticum, did not.[18] 

Liberation from the Powers

In Hermetic lore, the practitioner passing through the various planetary spheres of influence, gathering lessons in wisdom along the way, eventually reaches the Eighth, the realm of the fixed stars, and there joins earlier kindred who had made the liberatory voyage. Above the Eighth awaits the Ninth, the realm of eternity and silent luminosity, about which nothing more can be said. In Egyptian lore, this was the Ennead, the abode of the gods.

What might it mean to be liberated even from the gods?

In his book on the religious function of the psyche, Lionel Corbett calls for a “trans-archetypal psychology” that couples contemplative and psychological insight. It is possible to work through, say, rage so completely that the martial archetypal force of it dissipates.[19] The same applies to other intense states of archetypal possession: handled correctly, they flow by, leaving consciousness stable and intact. (“Be passersby,” the Gnostic Jesus advises.) Beyond this, the trans-archetypal dimension refers to pre-symbolic, formless totality, corresponding to Kant's noumenal level, the absolute of Nirguṇa Brahman, Eckhart's Godhead beyond God, and Jung’s unknowable metaphysical background of the Self, archetype of wholeness and totality.[20] 

One might argue that these states or levels are themselves archetypal, but that leads us into an infinite regression, the ultimate result of which is a kind of archetypally framed reductionism, always to some prior mythic presence. By contrast, learning from a constellated archetype and feeling it fade is not a conceptual argument, but a deeply felt transition.

What about the risk of inflation, which Jung described as identification with an archetype?[21] 

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola enlisted with Savonarola, but from his first Hermetic adventures he claimed to have been called to knowledge by no lesser a being than God. An obvious pattern of arrogance, specialness, and entitlement stretches through much of his life. The same red signature shows up in Tomasso Campanella and Giordano Bruno, both enamored of Hermetic teachings, both on a crusade to revive Egyptian religion all by themselves—and both surprised to be jailed for heresy, as though laws then in effect did not apply to them. These men displayed the characterological narcissism that imperiled Crowley, Gurdjieff, Blavatsky, and other ambitious proponents of the esoteric path despite their depth of gnosis. Narcissism predisposes to inflation, as every scandal-plagued guru seems to demonstrate so spectacularly.

Corbett, a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst, argues that for the rest of us, exalted spiritual states and encounters tend to have the opposite effect: they deflate the ego and humble us.[22] In fact, at profound levels of unitive consciousness, no “I” remains to be inflated. All this contrasts sharply with Hillman, who maintains that the gods show up mainly in our pathologies, not in higher states of consciousness.[23] 

In the Hermetica, liberation from the gods does not mean an attempt at severance, as though one could magically transcend adversity or get free of synchronistic surprises. Liberation means freedom from possession and oppression. It means that no matter what befalls us, through Nous (creative consciousness) we enjoy direct experiential connection with a Mystery that preceded the gods, the heavens, and the universe itself. As Book 10 of the Corpus Hermeticum elaborates:

Nay more, if we must boldly speak the truth, the true man is e'en higher than the gods, or at the [very] least the gods and men are very whit in power each with the other equal. For no one of the gods in heaven shall come down to the earth, o'er-stepping heaven's limit; whereas man doth mount up to heaven and measure it; he knows what things of it are high, what things are low, and learns precisely all things else besides. And greater thing than all; without e'en quitting earth, he doth ascend above. So vast a sweep doth he possess of ecstasy.[24]

“True man” is Hermetic and Gnostic code for the authentically realized human being. Again and again, the Hermetic literature insists on developing our consciousness-based, divinely rooted powers of imagination, creativity, ethical responsibility, and love in order to achieve our full human stature and take our rightful place as mature citizens of Earth and cosmos.

Although Hermeticism never condemns religion, having lived peacefully with Christianity until Augustine and his followers turned against it, the project of evolving gnosis, Nous, and ethical self-guidance renders questionable the entire apparatus of authority and belief. In Gnostic parlance, psychikoi refers to believers who favor the firm structures of guided worship and external religious authority. Hylikoi (also called sarkikoi) are materialists with no interest in a spiritual path of any kind. Gnostikoi cultivate guidance from within.

The elaborate tales of Hermeticists and Gnostics suggests that, at least for some of us, storytelling offers greater nourishment for wisdom-seeking than strictures on how or what to believe. Do all those claims of possessing eternal truth convince anyone but the convinced, many of whom harbor secret doubts?

From religion derives the compulsion for our tales to always be factual. But what if fiction, whether ancient or contemporary, exerts more power of influence and inspiration? The fiction of Bulwer-Lytton fed Rosicrucians, Theosophists, and New Age adherents. It still does, even when unrecognized below a psychoeducational veneer. In her National Book Award acceptance speech in 1972, Ursula K. Le Guin suggested that

At this point, realism is perhaps the least adequate means of understanding or portraying the incredible realities of our existence. A scientist who creates a monster in his laboratory; a librarian in the library of Babel; a wizard unable to cast a spell; a space ship having trouble in getting to Alpha Centauri: all these may be precise and profound metaphors of the human condition. The fantasist, whether he uses the ancient archetype of myth and legend or the younger ones of science and technology, may be talking as seriously as any sociologist — and a great deal more directly — about human life as it is lived, and as it might be lived, and as it ought to be lived.[25] 

In this connection I have written about the possibility of “post-belief spirituality” and whether Hermeticism might be updated for our day into Terragnosis, an Earth-honoring path of stories, ideas, and practices which gratefully acknowledge their Hermetic roots stretching back to ancient Egypt.[26] 

Meanwhile, perhaps we might take a cue from Hermeticism, wonder whether gods (or archetypes) would prefer apprentices to followers, and reconsider the advice given in another cultural tradition, that of Confucius:

“Keep a distance from spiritual beings while showing them due reverence.”[27]

Bibliography

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Jung, C. G. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Keller-Jenny, Tina. A Lifelong Confrontation with the Psychology of C. G. Jung. New Orleans: Spring Journal, 2009.

Lachman, Gary. The Secret Teachers of the Western World. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher / Penguin, 2015.

Lachman, Gary. The Quest For Hermes Trismegistus: From Ancient Egypt to the Modern World. Edinburgh, UK, 2011.

Le Guin, Ursula. The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction. New York: Perigee Books, 1979.

Satya. “The Satya Interview: Going Bugs with James Hillman.” 1997. http://www.satyamag.com/jan97/going.html

Shakespeare, William. The Life and Death of Julius Caesar. The Tech (MIT). http://shakespeare.mit.edu/julius_caesar/full.html

Stafford, William. “A Ritual to Each Other.” Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58264/a-ritual-to-read-to-each-other