ecosophia | Magic Monday

It's getting toward midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. With certain exceptions, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note: Any question or comment received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. (I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says.

The picture? I'm working my way through photos of my lineage, focusing on the teachers whose work has influenced me and the teachers who influenced them in turn. I've taken the lineage of OBOD back as far as I can, and now it's time to jump to another initiatory lineage, the Martinist Order. It's bad form (and forbidden by the obligations of initiation) to reveal the name of your Martinist initiator, even indirectly; thus I'm going to leap over the last several steps in my Martinist filiation to this gentleman, René Chambellant, whose title as a Gnostic bishop was Tau Renatus. Born in 1907, he was an oral surgeon by trade, and spent many years in central Africa teaching oral surgery and dentistry at a college in the Congo. He was initiated into Martinism and numerous other esoteric orders by Robert Ambelain, one of the great figures of the modern French esoteric traditions; in 1944, after the Gnostic patriarch Constant Chevillon was assassinated by the Nazis, Chambellant became the head of l'Eglise Gnostique Universelle, one of the major French Gnostic churches of the time. Several important Martinist lineages received their initiation through him.

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~~With that said, have at it!~~

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Greetings JMG!

Here's a thought regarding "Archetypes" (in the Jungian sense).
I'll try and be as concise as possible here, just want to bounce this premise off of you this week! ;^) Here goes...

The archetypes in a Jungian sense exist in the "collective unconscious" of the human race. This puts them outside the subjective experience of any one single person, and available to All of humanity. That said, they appear outside the time/space continuum, and seem to be "objective", since they transcend any one "personal unconsciousness". There are "many" archetypes overall, but "cross-culturally' the archetypes of pagan pantheons all seem to have variations or masks/personas of the same Seven major archetypes. For example the Trickster archetype typified by the Greek/Roman Hermes & Mercury; Germanic Odin, et. We'll just keep to the seven "major" here.

Additionally, these archetypes also have their "shadow" mask/personas too, i.e., Loki/Odin for example. My point here is not to get into a large comparison of pantheons, but to attempt to conceptualize an "Archetype" + "Mask/Persona" in any one pantheon = a "god/goddess" in any particular pantheon!

The Archetypes are All the Same! What differentiates an archetype in any given pantheon from another pantheon is the Cultural form or mask/persona of that particular culture. In this sense the "gods/goddesses" can be said to be "objectively" real?

Is this a fair thing to say in your opinion?

Thanks for your consideration on this conundrum (to me)! ;^)

JDB

Yes, that's one way to look at deities, and it's one that's been explored by some Jung-influenced thinkers -- James Hillman is one example. You're right, too, that if that's what deities are, they have an objective reality. Of course many traditions suggest that they have an objective reality in other senses as well.

For what it might be worth, my own speculating and meditating upon the nature of the gods has trended in this particular direction. I've been reading a lot of Jung's work, mostly so that I can adequately prepare to read his Red Book. I've also been reading a new book defending Averroes' interpretation of Aristotle's "De Anima" (that is, the so-called "unity of the intellect") and it occurred to me that there might be some fruitful philosophical and theological insight to be gained by comparing and contrasting the Jungian collective unconscious and the (possible) Aristotelian understanding of a shared active intellect amongst all human beings. But I've only just begun to meditate upon that. It might amount to nothing.

Edited 2023-06-12 10:24 (UTC)

I've been thinking a lot about this recently too. JMG's response crystalized something for me.

Archetypes might be seen as the human accessible form of the gods. This approach makes sense to conceptualize the gods, but keep in your mind there is a lot you're not seeing and they will surprise you!

It makes me think of Newtonian vs relativistic physics. Newton wasn't wrong, he was just seeing the picture that made sense at his level. Approach the speed of light and things change.

Magic Monday

Archetypal Thoughts?

Re: Archetypal Thoughts?

Re: Archetypal Thoughts?

Re: Archetypal Thoughts?