Tag Archives: Carl Jung

alchemy, cycle, fourfolds, Psychology, sixteenfolds

Carl Jung’s Alchemical Tetrameria

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Jung’s diagram of his alchemical tetrameria is supposed to represent the evolving self, and suggests movement, succession, and change and yet stillness, consistency, and renewal. His own diagram is quite different from mine, but I do think that mine has some merit.

What are those elements A, B, C, D, and a, b, c, d, and the subscripts 1, 2, 3, 4, indicating the modification of them? I’m not quite sure that it matters, except that for the relationships between the two, and the relationships between the four squares, and the relationships between the four parts of the four squares.

In Jung’s diagram, A equals a cycle of a, b, c, and d, and likewise B a cycle of a1, b1, c1, and d1, etc., and so we can instead say A is a cycle of Aa, Ab, Ac, and Ad, and likewise B is a cycle of Ba, Bb, Bc, and Bd, etc. In that sense my diagram denotes much the same as Jung’s.

Nevertheless, I’m going to have to cycle through some more thoughts about why one should spend too much time contemplating this diagram.

Further Reading:

https://elements.spiritalchemy.com/t3-Ch3.html

http://finitegeometry.org/sc/ph/imago.html

http://www.log24.com/philo/Jung/Aion14.html

Murray Stein / Jung’s Map of the Soul: an introduction

Leslie Stein / Becoming Whole: Jung’s equation for realizing God

Carl Jung / Aion

[*12.10, *12.11]

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eightfolds, Metaphysics, Physics, Space and Time, spacetime

Noether-Pauli-Jung, V2

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What happens when the fourfold of Noether’s Theorem is spliced together with the fourfold of Pauli-Jung? Both have Space-Time and Matter-Energy. The former has Conservation and Symmetry, and the latter has Causality and Synchronicity. And if Space-Time and Matter-Energy are both divided into Space and Time and Matter and Energy, one obtains this eight-fold.

Causality means that some action or cause in time (say a process) of things in space can have an effect (another process, say) on different things in space, and Synchronicity means that different events (say processes) separated in space can have non-causal relationships between them.  Conservation means the consistency of a quantity of matter or energy or matter-energy through time, and Symmetry means the consistency of a measure of a structure or form through space.

I am reminded of my fourfold Four Bindings, consisting of Chains, Grids, Blocks, and Cycles. Causality and Synchronicity are Chains (or non-chains for the latter) Space and Time are Grids (or flexible meshes), Matter and Energy are Blocks (or chunks of stuff), and Symmetry or Conservation are Cycles (of the group-theoretic kind or the equivalence class kind or just loops).

Further Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetry

https://equivalentexchange.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/noethers-theorem/

https://equivalentexchange.wordpress.com/2018/01/23/atom-and-archetype/

Four Bindings

This is a reworking of a previous six-fold diagram that I believe is served better as an eight-fold.

Noether-Pauli-Jung

[*10.68, *10.155, *11.55]

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eightfolds, Esoteric, fourfolds, Psychology

Seven Sermons to the Dead, V2

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We must, therefore, distinguish the qualities of the pleroma. The qualities are pairs of opposites, such as—

The Effective and the Ineffective.
Fullness and Emptiness.
Living and Dead.
Difference and Sameness.
Light and Darkness.
The Hot and the Cold.
Force and Matter.
Time and Space.
Good and Evil.
Beauty and Ugliness.
The One and the Many. etc.

— Carl Jung, from Seven Sermons to the Dead

I previously mentioned two fourfolds which are perhaps better combined as an eightfold. These concepts or entities are from Carl Jung’s “Seven Sermons to the Dead”.

To the left are the “principal gods”, who are said to be in one-to-one correspondence with the “world’s measurements”. What then are these measurements? Are they the coordinates of relativistic Space-Time or something else?

  • The God-Sun: The beginning
  • Eros: Binding of two together, outspreading and brightening
  • The Tree of Life: Filling space with bodily forms
  • The Devil: The Void, opening all that is closed, dissolving all formed bodies, and destroyer of everything

And to the right we have:

  • The Pleroma: The spiritual universe as the abode of gods and of the totality of the divine powers and emanations.
  • The Creatura: The living world, subject to perceptual difference, distinction, and information
  • Abraxas: The supreme power of being transcending all divinities and demons and uniting all opposites into one
  • Philemon: Jung’s spiritual guide and the narrator, also said to be Simon Magus or Basilides

Further Reading:

http://gnosis.org/library/7Sermons.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sermons_to_the_Dead

https://jungiangenealogy.weebly.com/seven-sermons.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleroma

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraxas

Who is Philemon?

Seven Sermons to the Dead

Seven Sermons to the Dead, Part 2

[*10.76, *11.49]

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eightfolds, fourfolds, Psychology

John Beebe’s Eight Function Model

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After my last post about an ad-hoc eightfold metaphysics, I spent a few minutes trying to create an eightfold psychology. Feeling insufficient to the task, I quickly put this aside and instead wondered if there was any prior work for this, and lo and behold, I found a wealth of such things. Eight seems to be a popular number for the enumeration of the psyche and related subjects.

I’ve already mentioned Robert Plutchik’s Emotions and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow, which are both sort of psychological dissections. If you’re into Jung and related psychologies, Jungian analyst John Beebe developed his eight-function model of personality types that blends Jungian concepts together into an interesting system. The eight types are split into two sets of four: for every type in the first “positive” set (ego-syntonic) there is a corresponding type in a “shadow” set (ego-dystonic). Each set of four has a superior, an auxiliary, a tertiary, and an inferior function.

  • Hero/Heroine (superior function)
  • Father/Mother (auxiliary function) (or good parent)
  • Puer/Puella (tertiary function) (or eternal child)
  • Anima/Animus (inferior function)
  • Opposing persona (shadow of superior) (villain?)
  • Senex/Witch (shadow of auxiliary) (or critical parent)
  • Trickster (shadow of tertiary) (added deceiver for balance)
  • Demon/Daimon (shadow of inferior) (daemon?)

In my diagram, I’ve shown each function paired with its shadow function. And of course being Jungian, the terminology is full of gender distinctions, which could fairly easily be eliminated. There are also lots of arcane associations to MBTI and such, so this will take more than a quick look. Please just wait here, and I’ll be back with an update soon (or not)!

Further Reading:

The John Beebe 8 function model

Eight-Function Model

http://www.erictb.info/archetypes.html

https://www.careerplanner.com/8CognitiveFunctions/Cognitive-Functions-Simply-Explained.cfm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Beebe

Also see my posts:

Carl Jung’s Psychological Types

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

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alchemy, Physics, sixfolds, spacetime

Noether-Pauli-Jung

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What happens when the fourfold of Noether’s Theorem is spliced together with the fourfold of Pauli-Jung? Both have Space-Time and Matter-Energy. The former has Conservation and Symmetry, and the latter has Causality and Synchronicity.

I had to remind myself that Conservation means consistency (of matter or energy) through time (and space), and Symmetry means consistency (of form) through space (and time), so in some sense they are dualistic.

Combined, one has the three axes of dual concepts, represented above.

Further Reading:

https://equivalentexchange.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/noethers-theorem/

https://equivalentexchange.wordpress.com/2018/01/23/atom-and-archetype/

[*10.68]

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alchemy, Esoteric, Psychology

Seven Sermons to the Dead, Part 2

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Here with inadequate description is another fourfold of entities from Seven Sermons to the Dead.

  • The Pleroma: The spiritual universe as the abode of gods and of the totality of the divine powers and emanations.
  • The Creatura: The living world, subject to perceptual difference, distinction, and information
  • Abraxas: The supreme power of being transcending all divinities and demons and uniting all opposites into one
  • Philemon: Jung’s spiritual guide, the narrator

Further Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sermons_to_the_Dead

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleroma

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraxas

Who is Philemon?

[*10.76]

alchemy, fourfolds, Psychology

Seven Sermons to the Dead

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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 bindeth twain together and outspreadeth himself in brightness.

Three is the Tree of Life, for it filleth space with bodily forms.

Four is the devil, for he openeth all that is closed. All that is formed of bodily nature doth he dissolve; he is the destroyer in whom everything is brought to nothing.

— Carl Jung, from Seven Sermons to the Dead

Further Reading:

http://gnosis.org/library/7Sermons.htm

https://jungiangenealogy.weebly.com/seven-sermons.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life

[*10.76]

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fourfolds, Metaphysics, Physics, Psychology, Space and Time

Atom and Archetype

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A few weeks ago I ran across this nice review of the book Atom and Archetype: the Pauli-Jung letters 1932-1958. This is a collection of letters exchanged between psychiatrist Carl Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli over a course of years. Evidently, Pauli was quite the metaphysician and Jung was intrigued by Einstein’s physics of relative space and time. Together in dialectic they argued and struggled to join together the disparate notions of mind and matter.

What mainly caught my eye was a diagram that I’ve slightly altered and shown above. I’ve mainly just replaced energy with matter-energy for two reasons: first because matter and energy are inter-convertible and second because matter conditions space. This results in similarity to the fourfold diagram for Lucretius that I’ve shown before, consisting of Particles, the Void, Falling, and Swerving.

Further Reading:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/03/09/atom-and-archetype-pauli-jung/

Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli / Atom and Archetype: the Pauli-Jung letters 1932-1958, Princeton University Press; Updated edition (July 21, 2014)

https://equivalentexchange.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/lucretius-on-the-nature-of-things/

https://equivalentexchange.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/matter-energy-space-and-time/

https://equivalentexchange.wordpress.com/2015/01/16/wave-particle-duality/

https://equivalentexchange.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/noethers-theorem/

[*10.60]

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fourfolds

A Solstice Message

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sq_jung_quote

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.”

— Carl Jung, from Memories, Dreams, Reflections

[*9.80]

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fourfolds, Philosophy, Psychology

Carl Jung’s Psychological Types

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Carl Jung’s Psychological Types can be thought of as different mental states: Intuition, Sensation, Cognition, or Emotion, or as different events in the mind: Intuiting, Sensing, Thinking, and Feeling. I’m not sure why intuition and sensation is often paired with thinking and feeling, as it seems to mix tenses.

In Jung’s theory, intuition and sensation are considered perceiving or irrational functions, and thinking (cognition) and feeling (emotion) are considered judging or rational functions. In opposition to great quantities of scholarship, I believe that intuition is more rational than feeling, as well as intuition being a subjective choice as opposed to feeling being ordered choosing, or choice integrated over time. Similarly, thinking is sensing integrated. Thus perception is the substance of the form of judgment, and rationality and irrationality both bridge perception and judgment.

These distinctions are also the basis for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a psychological test and classification based on four dichotomies: extraversion-introversion, sensing-intuition, thinking-feeling, and judgment-perception, each choice of which determines a person’s attitude, perception, judgment, and lifestyle. There are thus sixteen different personalities measured by this assessment.

This is sixteenfold less than the 256 different philosophical personalities represented by the Archic Matrix. It would be interesting if someone would create a Myers-Briggs type test for philosophers that would serve the same function for the Archic Matrix. Initial question: can the 16 personalities encoded by the MBTI, the 256 philosophical personalities encoded by the Archic Matrix, and the 64 Hexagrams of the I Ching be linked?

Further Reading:

http://thezodiac.com/soul/elements/cornerstones.htm

http://malankazlev.com/kheper/topics/Jung/typology.html

http://www.personalitypage.com/four-prefs.html

http://www.mindstructures.com/2010/08/intuition-sensing-thinking-and-feeling/

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Jung/types.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_Types

[*5.189, *7.2]

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