Carl Jung and Kabbalah
This is almost an appendix to the previous article in the series, where I discussed the possibility that Jung was responsible for a new religion. (What follows will make most sense if you’ve read it.) It may have seemed like that on the basis of the two incidents in his life I described there. It is of course highly unlikely in modern times that a completely new religion could be created. I therefore conclude that in reality Jung’s ideas represent the renaissance of an ancient religion (spiritual tradition) in a modern form¹.
On that theme, I have always been struck by the close correspondence between the opening of Jung’s Seven Sermons (which in the previous article I described as a Gnostic outpouring), and the metaphysical understanding of the ancient Jewish mystical system the Kabbalah. I refer to these here for your consideration.
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This is the beginning of the first of Jung’s Seven Sermons², thus his important opening statement:
“I begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same as fullness. In infinity full is no better than empty. Nothingness is both empty and full. As well might ye say anything else of nothingness, as for instance, white is it, or black, or again, it is not, or it is.
A thing that is infinite and eternal hath no qualities, since it hath all qualities.
This nothingness or fullness we name the PLEROMA. Therein both thinking and being cease, since the eternal and infinite possess no qualities. In it no being is, for he would then be distinct from the pleroma, and would possess qualities which would distinguish him as something distinct from the pleroma.
In the pleroma there is nothing and everything. It is quite fruitless to think about the pleroma, for this would mean self-dissolution”.
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And here is a passage from A Kabbalistic Universe by Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi³:
“God the Transcendent is called in Kabbalah AYIN. AYIN means No-Thing, AYIN is beyond Existence, separate from any-thing. AYIN is Absolute Nothing.
AYIN is not above or below, Neither is AYIN still or in motion. There is nowhere where AYIN is, for AYIN is not.
AYIN is soundless, but neither is it silence. Nor is AYIN a void — and yet out of the zero of AYIN’s no-thingness comes the one of EN SOF.
EN SOF in Hebrew means the Endless. As the One to the Zero of AYIN, EN SOF is the Absolute All to AYIN’s Absolute Nothing.
God the Transcendent is AYIN and God the Immanent is EN SOF. Both Nothing and All are the same.
Beyond the titles of AYIN and EN SOF no attributes are given to the Absolute. God is God and there is nothing to compare with God”.
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I am always interested in finding ways to eliminate apparent contradictions between religions, and attempt to synthesise them. In these two passages there is a perhaps surprising parallel between Jung and Kabbalah, different from the usual association of his ideas with Gnosticism and Alchemy.
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I hope you have enjoyed this article. I have written in the past about other topics, including spirituality, metaphysics, psychology, science, Christianity, politics and astrology. All of those articles are on Medium, but the simplest way to see a guide to them is to visit my website (click here and here). My most recent articles, however, are only on Medium; for those please check out my lists.
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Footnotes:
- see, for example, Alfred Ribi’s Turn of an Age: The Spiritual Roots of Jungian Psychology in Hermeticism, Gnosticism and Alchemy, Gnosis Archive Books, 2019
- as found in VII Sermones ad Mortuos, Watkins Books, 1967
- Rider & Company, 1977, p7
