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VII
SERMONES AD MORTUOS - C G JUNG
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The dead filled the place murmuring and said: Tell us of gods and devils, accursed one!
The god-sun is the highest good; the devil the opposite. Thus have you two gods. But there are many high and good things and many great evils. Among these are two god-devils; the one is the BURNING ONE, the other is the GROWING ONE.
The burning one is EROS, who has the form of flame. Flame gives light
because it consumes. The growing one is the TREE OF LIFE. It buds, as
in growing it heaps up living stuff. Eros flames up and dies. But the
tree of life grows with slow and constant increase through unmeasured
time.
Good and evil are united in the flame.
Good and evil are united in the increase of the tree.
In their divinity stand life and love opposed.
Innumerable as the host of the stars is the number of gods and devils.
Each star is a god, and each space that a star fills is a devil. But
the empty-fullness of the whole is the pleroma. The operation of the
whole is Abraxas, to whom only the ineffective stands opposed.
Four is the number of the principal gods, as four is the number of the
world's measurements.
One is the beginning, the god-sun.
Two is Eros; for he binds two together and outspreads himself in brightness.
Three is the Tree of Life, for it fills space with bodily forms.
Four is the devil, for he opens all that is closed. All that is formed
of bodily nature does he dissolve; he is the destroyer in whom everything
is brought to nothing.
For me, to whom knowledge has been given of the mulitplicity and diversity of the gods, it is well. But woe unto you, who replace these incompatible many by a single god. For in so doing you beget the torment which is bred from not understanding, and you mutilate the creature whose nature and aim is distinctiveness. How can you be true to your own nature when you try to change the many into the one! What you do unto the gods is done likewise to you. You all become equal and thus is your nature maimed. Equality shall prevail not for god, but only for the sake of man. For the gods are many, whilst men are few. The gods are mighty and can endure their manifoldness. For like the stars they abide in solitude, parted one from the other by immense distances. But men are weak and cannot endure their mainfold nature. Therefore they dwell together and need communion, that they may bear their separateness. For redemption's sake I teach you the rejected truth, for the sake of which I was rejected.
The mulitplicity of the gods corresponds to the muliplicity of man. Numberless gods await the human state. Numberless gods have been men. Man shares in the nature of the gods. He comes from the gods and goes to god. Thus, just as it does not serve man to reflect upon the pleroma, it is to no avail to worship the multiplicity of the gods. Least of all does it avail to worship the first god, the effective abundance and the summum bonum. By our prayers we can add to it nothing, and from it nothing take; because the effective void swallows all.
The bright gods form the celestial world. It is manifold and infinitely spreading and increasing. The god-sun is the supreme lord of that world. The dark gods form the earth-world. They are simple and infinitely diminishing and declining. The devil is the earth-world's lowest lord, the moon-spirit, satellite of the earth, smaller, colder, and more dead than the earth. There is no difference between the might of the celestial gods and those of the earth. The celestial gods magnify, the earth-gods diminish. Measureless is the movement of both.