Reviving Ancient Spirituality: Jung and Modern Paganism

JONES: I’m going to ask the question in this lecture, “What is the evidence for the truth of the biographer of Jung who said that Jung succeeded where Julian the Apostate emperor failed?” That's what I want to look at. What was the impact of Jung on modern Western culture? [00:00:11]

In what I would call – “The triumph of pagan Oneism in our once Christian culture.” I ask myself, “Was Jung an innovator or one among many?” And the answer is obviously “Yes and no;” he was an innovator in tying the arising interest in the spirituality of paganism to a new psychological methodology. [00:01:00]

Along these lines, researchers of contemporary spirituality – the University of Nottingham in the U.K. state, “We suspect [these are researches] that the spiritual awareness we are uncovering has always been there, but is only now coming to light.” What is happening, you see, is this spirituality that was undercover, esoteric, is now coming on to the surface. [00:02:38]

For many centuries this kind of thinking was driven underground by the early triumph of Christianity. Remember, we referenced Julian the Apostate, who tried to bring that back into a powerful expression in the Roman Empire and failed. But from that time on, paganism was driven underground. [00:04:37]

The 2nd century Gnostic so-called Christians who sought to worship Isis did so, in order to understand quote, “The great mystery.” These were Gnostic Christians who attended the mystery religion’s cults in order to get beyond Christianity and understand the great mystery. [00:06:28]

Gnosis means ‘knowledge’, the knowledge of the self as divine. You move along a bit, you find other phrases – the Freemasons cherish the “sacred secret” or the “ageless wisdom;” defining it as – quote: “the religion in which all men agree.” You see this one religion shows up in many expressions. [00:07:12]

The Wiccans, (that is modern day witches) speak of the ‘old wisdom’. And that old wisdom is encapsulated in the phrase – “as above, so below.” That's a very interesting phrase, it’s a very oneistic kind of phrase that the “above and the below” are the same. The ‘joining’ if you like of the opposites into one. [00:08:59]

The work he refers to, he claims, is that done in ancient shamanic times; and believes that our contemporary calling is to carry on, quote: “the Great Work of the first peoples.” – the American Indians. So the classic example for us in our time, is to follow the traditions and spirituality of the American Indians. [00:15:09]

The Great Work is before all things – the creation of man by himself, that is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties and his future. Especially, the perfect emancipation of his will.” You see that changing the human being at the species level? [00:17:23]

The Great Work he says is, “No longer to be a Christian, but to seek a new ordering of human affairs.” So he's very much into that tradition of the Great Work. [00:19:37]

The Perennial Philosophy. This is a further coded term commonly used by those in the inner circle of these esoteric movements. One of the most famous adherents of this Perennial Philosophy is my own future king – Prince Charles. He is the patron of the Temenos Academy, which is dedicated to the central ideas of the Perennial Philosophy. [00:20:02]

Philip Goldberg, whom I mentioned who describes the Hinduization of America says that, the Eastern Hinduism and Western Perennialism are the same. At the depth of being, though they seem different. The domain associated with mysticism where the individual soul meets the all-encompassing divine. [00:22:13]