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Gönderen Konu: Septem Sermones ad Mortuos  (Okunma sayısı 2238 defa)

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Temmuz 15, 2013, 10:49:02 ös
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by Carl Gustav Jung, 1916
(Translation by Stephan A. Hoeller)




The Red Book - Liber Novus

Introduction to the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos

"The Seven Sermons to the Dead," Septem Sermones ad Mortuos, might best be described as the "summary revelation of the Red Book." It is the only portion of the imaginative material contained in the Red Book manuscripts that C.G. Jung shared more or less publicly during his lifetime. To comprehend the importance of the Septem Sermones, one must understand the events behind the writing of the Red Book itself -- a task ultimately facilitated by the epochal publication of Jung's Red Book in October of 2009 (C. G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus, ed. Sonu Shamdasani, Norton, 2009). Dr. Shamdasani's extensive introduction and notes on the text of the Red Book provide a wealth of previously unavailable primary documentation on this crucial period of Jung's life.

In November of 1913 Carl Jung commenced an extraordinary exploration of the psyche, or "soul." He called it his “confrontation with the unconscious.” During this period Jung willfully entered imaginative or "visionary" states of consciousness. The visions continued intensely from the end of 1913 until about 1917 and then abated by around 1923. Jung carefully recorded this imaginative journey in six black-covered personal journals (referred to as the "Black Books"); these notebooks provide a dated chronological ledger of his visions and dialogues with his Soul.

Beginning in late 1914, Jung began transcribing from the Black Book journals the draft manuscript of his legendary Red Book, the folio-sized leather bound illuminated volume he created to contain the formal record of his journey. Jung repeatedly stated that the visions and imaginative experiences recorded in the Red Book contained the nucleus of all his later works.

Jung kept the Red Book private during his lifetime, allowing only a few of his family and associates to read from it. The only part of this visionary material that Jung choose to release in limited circulation was the Septem Sermones, which he had privately printed in 1916.

Throughout his life Jung occasionally gave copies of this small book to friends and students, but it was available only as a gift from Jung himself and never offered for public sale or distribution. When Jung's autobiographical memoir Memories, Dreams, Reflections was published in 1962, the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos was included as an appendix.

It remained unclear until very recently exactly how the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos related to the hidden Red Book materials. After Jung's death in 1961, all access to the Red Book was denied by his heirs. Finally in October of 2009, nearly fifty years after Jung's death, the family of C. G. Jung release the Red Book for publication in a beautiful facsimile edition, edited by Sonu Shamdasani. With this central work of Jung's now in hand, we discover that the Seven Sermons to the Dead actually compose the closing pages of the Red Book draft manuscripts; the version transcribed for the Red Book varies only slightly from the text published in 1916, however the Red Book includes after each of the sermons an additional amplifying homily by Philemon (Jung's spirit guide). [The Red Book, p346-54]

Base on their context, voice, content, and history, I suggest the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos might now properly be described as the "summary revelation of the Red Book." Seen in this light, it becomes understandable why Jung chose this one section of his "revelations" for printing and distribution among his disciples



Jung's painting titled, "Septem Sermones ad Mortuous" - completed around 1918 while working on Liber Novus, and subsequently give as a gift to H.G. Baynes


The years … when I pursued the inner images were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life.

Everything later was merely the outer classification, the scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then.”

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung gives one account of how the Septem Sermones came to be written (the Sunday referred to below is probably Sunday, 30 January 1916):


It began with a restlessness, but I did not know what it meant or what "they" wanted of me. There was an ominous atmosphere all around me. I had the strange feeling that the air was filled with ghostly entities. Then it was as if my house began to be haunted....
 Around five o'clock in the afternoon on Sunday the front doorbell began ringing frantically...but there was no one in sight. I was sitting near the doorbell, and not only heard it but saw it moving. We all simply stared at one another. The atmosphere was thick, believe me! Then I knew that something had to happen. The whole house was filled as if there were a crowd present, crammed full of spirits. They were packed deep right up to the door, and the air was so thick it was scarcely possible to breathe. As for myself, I was all a-quiver with the question: "For God's sake, what in the world is this?" Then they cried out in chorus, "We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought/' That is the beginning of the Septem Sermones. (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p190-1)
A careful reading of The Red Book (including the abundant notes provided by the editor, Sonu Shamdasani) provides further contextual information. Shamdasani includes in the appendix a crucial journal entry from Jung's Black Book 5, dated 16 January 1916 [The Red Book, Appendix C, p370-1]. In this entry, Jung's Soul reveals to him the cosmological vision that will be more fully developed two weeks later in the Seven Sermons to the Dead. During these weeks Jung sketched in his journal the outlines of his first "mandala", the Systema Munditotius, which forms a schema to the vision conveyed in the Sermons [The Red Book, Appendix A, p363-4]. The Seven Sermons are recorded in journal entries in Black Book 6, dated 31 January to 8 February 1916.

In the original journal account of the revelation (Black Book 6) Jung himself is the voice speaking the Seven Sermons to the Dead. In the version transcribed into the Red Book manuscript, Jung gives Philemon as the voice speaking the Sermons. Interestingly, a few pages later, on the last page of the Red Book manuscript, Philemon is identified with the historical Gnostic prophet Simon Magus. When Jung subsequently transcribed the Sermons for printing as an independent text, the Sermons were attributed pseudepigraphically to yet another historical second century Gnostic teacher, Basilides of Alexandria. Thus Jung, Philemon, Simon Magus, and Basilides are all finally conflated together in the voice of the Gnostic prophet who speaks the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos.

Source:
http://gnosis.org/library/7Sermons_hoeller_trans.htm

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