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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,talk.religion.misc,alt.psychology.jung,alt.consciousness.mysticism,talk.religion.newage,alt.christnet,alt.thelema
From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nocTifer)
Subject: AEonics, CGJung, Christianity and Satanism
Date: 23 Aug 1997 10:52:11 -0700

49970804 aa2 Hail Satan!  (the bulk of text below is that of C.G. Jung)

peace be with you, my kin.

nocTifer re: an occult org called the 'Society of the Astral Star':
#>an Old Aeon establishment by my humble reckoning, lux-o-centric...
 
Lainie Petersen 
# I am not sure what you mean by this nocTifer. What do you mean by Old Aeon?
# Are you refering to the Crowlian Thelemic scheme of the "New Aeon" occuring
# at the receiving of the "Book of The Law"? 

I was being vague. :>  I think the phrase 'Old Aeon' realistically means 'by 
my standards out-dated, imbalanced and of previous cultures/principles'.
I think that by Thelemic principles (like you mention) it may well qualify,
in that it appears to be dualistically (true/false) belief-based and 
hierarchical in terms of power.  

the more concise way I was feeling about it, however, was as regards its 
*Christian* character, and I think that lux-o-centric Christian constructs
are very out-dated, imbalanced and of previous (immature) cultures and 
principles, horribly perpetuating dualistic tendencies.


I'm glad that I put off responding to this, since my recent studies lent me
not only a happy discovery of a possible previous incarnation (I suspend
judgement on whether theories of reincarnation are literally true, though
find contemplation of them valuable at times), but a goldmine of writing 
on the subject of Christianity's place in the modern world.  I've been 
linking Christianity and Satanism via the psychological model of Carl 
Gustav Jung, especially his ideas on the Shadow, and lately I've been 
looking more and more into his theories so as to get a better feel for how 
to approach the completion of my Christian rite I started in Fiat LVX.
 
without going into further detail, what I found in this research blew my
mind on the notion of the combination of modern occult ideas and Christian
religious and mystical ideology.  Jung was hip to Gnosticism, and I think
he was very conversant in alchemical, mystical and magical symbols and 
concepts necessary to truly understand how the Christian iconography and
theology can be effective in liberating the Christian in the modern world.

I quote a batch of snippets which illustrate simultaneously how I saw 
the Soc of the Astral Star as Old Aeon and what Jung was talking about 
in terms of Gnostic Christianity and Christian works (i.e. what I call 
magick):

	The message of the Christian symbol of Gnosis, and the
	compensation effected by the unconscious is Gnosis in
	even higher degree.

	...human wholeness as the goal.... is inextricably bound
	up with one's philosophical or religious assumptions.
	
	It would hardly be correct to say that the gaping "rift"
	in the Christian order of things is responsible for [the
	contradictions and conflicts of the conscious situation],
	since it is easy to show that Christian symbolism is
	particularly concerned with healing, or attempting to
	heal, this very wound.  It would be more correct to take
	the open conflict as a symptom of the psychic situation
	of Western man, and to deplore his inability to assimilate
	the whole range of the Christian symbol.
	[within psychoanalysis:] ...the archetypal images -- which 
	in a certain sense correspond to the dogmatic images -- 
	must be brought into consciousness.

	...all coercion [by the analyst] -- be it suggestion, 
	insinuation, or any other method of persuasion -- ultimately 
	proves to be nothing but an obstacle to the highest and
	most decisive experience of all, which is to be alone with
	his own self, or whatever else one chooses to call the
	objectivity of the psyche.  The patient must be alone if he
	is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no
	longer support himself.  Only this experience can give him
	an indestructible foundation.
	
	During the process of treatment the dialectical discussion
	leads logically to a meeting between the patient and his
	shadow, that dark half of the psyche which we invariably
	get rid of by means of projection: either by burdening our
	neighbors -- in a wider or narrower sense -- with all the
	faults which we obviously have ourselves, or by casting
	our sins upon a divine mediator....

	we assiduously avoid investigating whether in this very
	power of evil God might not have placed some special
	purpose which it is most important for us to know.  One
	often feels driven to some such view, when, like the
	psychotherapist, one has to deal with people who are
	confronted with their blackest shadow.

	{NOTE: A religious terminology comes naturally, as the
	       only adequate one in the circumstances, when we
	       are faced with the tragic fate that is the
	       unavoidable concommitant of wholeness.  "My fate"
	       means a daemonic will to precisely that fate --
	       a will not necessarily coincident with my own
	       (the ego will).  When it is opposed to the ego,
	       it is difficult not to feel a certain "power" in it,
	       whether divine or infernal.  The man who submits
	       to his fate calls it the will of God; the man who
	       puts up a hopeless and exhausting fight is more apt
	       to see the devil in it.  In either event this
	       terminology is not only universally understood but
	       meaningful as well.}

	We are told on every side that evil is evil and there can
	be no hesitation in condemning it, but that does not prevent
	evil from being the most problematical thing in the individual's
	life and the one which demands the deepest reflection.  What
	above all deserves our keenest attention is the question "Exactly
	*who* is the doer?"  For the answer to this question ultimately
	decides the value of the deed.  It is true that society attaches
	greater importance at first to what is done, because it is
	immediately obvious; but in the long run the right deed in the
	hands of the wrong man will also have a disastrous effect.

	The encounter with the dark half of the personality, or "shadow,"
	comes about of its own accord in any moderately thorough
	treatment....  out of a conflict borne with patience and
	fortitude, there emerges the solution destined... for that
	particular person.

	...the patient... must do the right thing, and do it with all
	his might, in order to prevent the pressure of evil from
	becoming too powerful in him.  He needs "justification by
	works," for "justification by faith" alone has remained an
	empty sound for him as for so many others.  Faith can
	sometimes be a substitute for lack of experience.  In these
	cases what is needed is real work.

	...little should we reproach ourselves that to love the sinner
	who is oneself is to make a pact with the devil.  Love makes
	a man better, hate makes him worse -- even when the man is
	oneself.

	...the contents of the personal unconscious (i.e. the shadow)
	are indistinguishably merged with the archetypal contents of
	the collective unconscious and drag the latter with them when
	the shadow is brought into consciousness.  This may exert an
	uncanny influence on the conscious mind; for activated
	archetypes have a disagreeable effect even -- or I should 
	perhaps say, particularly -- on the most cold-blooded
	rationalist.  He is afraid that ... superstition... is, as
	he thinks, forcing itself on him.  It then takes the form
	of the fear of "going mad" -- for everything that the modern
	mind cannot define it regards as insane.  It must be admitted
	that the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious can
	often assume grotesque and horrible forms in dreams and
	fantasies, so that even the most hard-boiled rationalist is
	not immune from shattering nightmares and haunting fears.  The
	psychological elucidation of these images, which cannot be
	passed over in silence or blindly ignored, leads logically into
	the depths of religious phenomenology.

	Whereas in the Church the increasing differentiation of ritual
	and dogma alienated consciousness from its natural roots in the
	unconscious, alchemy and astrology were ceaselessly engaged in
	preserving the bridge to nature, i.e., to the unconscious
	psyche, from decay.... It is true that alchemy always stood on
	the verge of heresy and that certain decrees leave no doubt as
	to the Church's attitude towards it, but on the other hand it
	was effectively protected by the obscurity of its symbolism,
	which could always be explained as harmless allegory.

	What the symbolism of alchemy expresses is the whole problem
	of the evolution of personality described above, the so-called
	individuation process.

	The alchemists ran counter to the Church in preferring to seek
	through knowledge rather than to find through faith....  they
	were in much the same position as modern man, who prefers
	immediate personal experience to belief in traditional ideas,
	or rather has it forced upon him.

	The central ideas of Christianity are rooted in Gnostic
	philosophy, which, in accorance with psychological laws,
	simply *had* to grow up at a time when the classical
	religions had become obselete.  It was founded on the
	perception of symbols thrown up by the unconscious
	individuation process which always sets in when the
	collective dominants of human life fall into decay.  At such
	a time there is bound to be a considerable number of
	individuals who are possessed by archetypes of a numinous
	nature that force their way to the surface in order to form
	new dominants.  This state of possession shows itself almost
	without exception in the fact that the possessed identify
	themselves with the archetypal contents of their unconscious,
	and, because they do not realize that the role which is being
	thrust upon them is the effect of new contents still to be
	understood, they exemplify these concretely in their own
	lives, thus becoming prophets and reformers.

	Jesus became the tutelary image or amulet against the
	archetypal powers that threatened to possess everyone.

	...there have always been people who, not satisfied with the
	dominants of conscious life, set forth -- under cover and by
	devious paths, to their destruction or salvation -- to seek 
	direct experience of the eternal roots, and, following the
	lure of the restless unconscious psyche, find themselves
	in the wilderness where, like Jesus, they come up against
	the son of darkness, the [Gk. antimimon pneuma].  Thus an old
	alchemist -- and he a cleric! -- prays: "Horridas nostrae
	mentis purga tenebras, accende lumen sensibus!"  (Purge the
	horrible darknesses of our mind, light a light for our senses!)
	The author of this sentence must have been undergoing the
	experience of the *nigredo*, the first stage of the work, which
	was felt as "melancholia" in alchemy and corresponds to the
	encounter with the shadow in psychology.

	When, therefore, modern pschotherapy once more meets with the
	activated archetypes of the collective unconscious, it is
	merely the repetition of a phenomenon that has often been
	observed in moments of great religious crisis, although it
	can also occur in individuals for whom the ruling ideas have
	lost their meaning.  An example of this is the *descensus ad
	inferos* in *Faust*, which, consciously or unconsciously, is
	an *opus alchymicum*.

	The problem of opposites called up by the shadow plays a great
	-- indeed, the decisive -- role in alchemy, since it leads in
	the ultimate phase of the work to the union of opposites in
	the archetypal form of the *hierosgamos* or "chymical wedding."
	Here the supreme opposites, male and female (as in the Chinese
	*yang* and *yin*), are melted into a unity purified of all
	opposition and therefore incorruptible.

	[specifically re Job of the OT]
	Like all old gods, Yahweh has his animal symbolism with its
	unmistakable borrowings from the much older theriomorphic
	gods of Egypt, especailly Horus and his four sons.  Of the
	four animals of Yahweh only one has a human face.  That is
	probably Satan, the godfather of man as a spiritual being.

	Yahweh's behavior is [that] of an unconscious being who 
	cannot be judged morally.  Yahweh is a *phenomenon* and, as
	Job says, "not a man."

	{NOTE:  The naive assumption that the creator of world is 
		a conscious being must be regarded as a disastrous
		prejudice which later gave rise to the most
		incredible dislocations of logic.  For example, the
		nonsensical doctrine of the *privatio boni* would
		never have been necessary had one not had to assume
		in advance that it is impossible for the consciousness
		of a good God to produce evil deeds.  Divine
		unconsciousness and lack of reflection, on the other
		hand, enable us to form a conception of God which
		puts his actions beyond moral judgement and allows
		no conflict to arise between goodness and beastliness.}

	The symbolic history of the Christ's life shows, as the essential
	teleological tendency, the crucifixion, viz. the union of Christ
	with the symbol of the tree.  It is no longer a matter of an
	impossible reconciliation of Good and Evil, but of man with his
	vegetative (=unconscious) life.

	...the cosmic power of self-destruction is given into the hands
	of man and ... man inherits the dual nature of the Father....
	Materialism and atheism, the negation of God, are indirect means
	to attain this goal.  Through the negation of God one becomes
	deified, i.e. god-almighty-like, and then one knows what is good
	for mankind.  That is how destruction begins....  The danger of
	following [this] path are very great indeed.  It begins with the
	lie, i.e., the projection of the shadow.

	There is need of people knowing about their shadow, because
	there must be somebody who does not project.  They ought to be
	in a visible position where they would be expected to project
	and unexpectedly they do not project!  They can thus set a
	visible example which would not be seen if they were invisible.

	...it is not Christianity, but our conception and interpretation
	of it, that has become antiquated in the face of the present 
	world situation.

	For more than fifty years we have known, or could have known,
	that there is an unconscious counterbalance to consciousness.
	Medical psychology has furnished all the necessary empirical
	and experimental proofs of this.  There is an unconscious
	psychic reality which demonstrably influences consciousness
	and its contents.  All this is known, but no practical
	conclusions have been drawn from this fact.  We still go on
	thinking and acting as before, as if we were *simplex* and
	not *duplex*.  Accordingly, we imagine ourselves to be
	innocuous, reasonable, and humane.  We do not think of
	distrusting our motives or of asking ourselves how the inner
	man feels about the things we do in the outside world.  But
	actually it is frivolous, superficial, and unreasonable of
	us, as well as psychically unhygienic, to overlook the
	reaction and standpoint of the unconscious.

	[this from the editor of the book from which all above quoted:]
	The philosophical alchemy of the Middle Ages must be viewed
	in historical terms as a compensatory movement issuing from
	the unconscious in response to Christianity, for the subject
	of alchemical meditations and techniques -- the realm of
	nature and *materia* -- had been denied a place and any
	adequate evaluation within Christianity; it was seen as
	that which was to be overcome.  Thus alchemy consists of dim,
	primitive mirrorings of Christian imagery and ideas, as Jung
	was able to show in *Psychology and Alchemy*..., using the
	analogy between the central concept of alchemy, the *lapis*
	or philosophers' stone, and Christ.
	-------------------------------------------------------------
	all from: _The Essential Jung_, ed. Anthony Storr, Princeton
	 University Press, 1983; various pp.
	____________________________________________________________

there is much I think valuable to the modern Christian I could quote from 
this text, alot about the role and origin of the shadow, how particular
moralistic sections of _The Bible_ can be understood as mystical
indications of self-investigation and individuation, and how nature
and materia ('mother earth') constitute the cast-out or repressed
elements of the world, thus becoming a significant portion of the
reality which is the shadow of our culture and ourselves: Satan.

in direct response to your question using the terminology above, the Old 
Aeon centered on the first part of the alchemical work, the *nigredo* as
various alchemists and Jung himself called it.  it consists of a direct
encounter with the shadow, likely directly reflected by Christian mystics 
such as St. John of the Cross as the Dark Night of the Soul, and if the 
initiate be unprepared, may lead one to attempt to banish that darkness, 
dwelling again in the light of consciousness.

what I am associating with 'New Aeon' thinking is the real attempt to
*integrate* that darkness, that shadow, Satan (interior, exterior), in
a careful and dedicated work, with the light, the consciousness.  it is
only in this way that anything uncorruptible, nondual (which should be
but is seldom implied by 'Light'), and *divine* can come to humanity.

blessed beast!
________________________________________________________________________
nocTifer: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com  ---  http://www.abyss.com/tokus
TOKUS-COE Office: 408/2-666-SLUG --- Mother Church (CoE) coe@netcom.com