Big Top ~ Echoes of Camels and Needles

Chapter 15
Big Top

Echoes of Camels and Needles

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"In a discussion on the Crucifixion, Jung elaborates on the symbolism of the two thieves who were crucified on either side of Jesus, the one who acknowledged and the other who scorned him.

". . . the image of the Saviour crucified between two thieves tells us that the progressive development and differentiation of consciousness leads to an ever more menacing awareness of the conflict and involves nothing less than a crucifixion of the ego, its agonizing suspension between irreconcilable opposites."

- C.G. Jung, Aion

- The Christian Mysteries as the Soul's Seven-Stage Journey to HIGHER GROUND
by Ann K Elliot

"The process of achieving command of all four functions is Individuation,
"even while bound to the cross of this limiting earth, one might open one's eyes at the center, to see, think, feel and intuit transcendence, and to act out such knowledge.: (Campbell, xxvii). These four functions can be seen as a cross. At the top is "Sensation", at the bottom is "Intuition" and left arm of the cross is "Feeling" and the right arm is "Thinking" with the center of the cross "Transcendent Function". The "Transcendent Function" is the term used to describe that faculty of the psyche "by which one is rendered capable of this work of gaining release from the claims of but one or the other pair-of opposites." (Campbell, xxvi)."

- Carl G. Jung
By Chaplain Paul G. Durbin, Ph.D.

"It is the moment of intersection between the human and the divine. Ego and Self are superimposed.
The human figure representing the ego is nailed to the mandala cross representing the Self. Around it various pairs of opposites are constellated. For instance, on either side of Christ two thieves are crucified."

- Edinger, The Christian Archetype (p. 98)

"In the image of the resurrection we have a promise, the fulfilment of which only experience can testify to. The truth of the resurrection does not rest on faith, rather it produces faith as a reality that arises from personal experience. Here I quote from H.A. Williams, an English Anglican contemplative,

"The prelude to resurrection as we experience it in this life is always powerlessness.",

(H. A. Williams: "True Resurrection".)

and that is the powerless state we are brought to in the crucifixion, and as Jung puts it:

"The utter failure came at the Crucifixion in the tragic words, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" If you want to understand the full tragedy of those words you must realise what they meant. Christ saw that his whole life, devoted to the truth according to his best conviction, had been a terrible illusion. He had lived it to the full absolutely sincerely, he had made his honest experiment, but it was nevertheless a compensation. On the cross his mission deserted him. But because he had lived so fully and devotedly he won through to the Resurrection body."

- Jung, New York Lecture, edited by Lane A. Pratt, 1972

"Throughout the biblical story of Christ's life he repeatedly refers to himself as being both the `Son of God' and the `Son of Man'. And as Jung observed:

" .....since Christ as man corresponds to the ego, and as God to the Self, he is at once both part and whole......" and that "...this would be equivalent to the highest possible state of completeness or perfection".

Which would be an ideal state of full and conscious attunement of the ego to the requirements of the Self. However the story of Christ's life itself is not one of an orderly procedure, through which one is freed from all pain and suffering, happily ending in a life of bliss.

In the Christianity of the churches Jesus became an amulet against confrontation with the archetypal powers. Through the simple act of belief in Him, one was freed of all responsibility for sin, He died for our sins and we were to be set free by belief in that. Yet as Jung also noted that very confrontation can and does:

"Happen to everyone in whom the Christian dominant has decayed. For this reason there have always been people who...set forth under cover by devious paths ... to seek direct experience of their eternal roots, and, following the lure of the restless unconscious psyche find themselves in the wilderness where, like Jesus they come up against the son of darkness."

- Way of the Ego
from The Metaphysical Perspective in the Work of C G Jung
by Rodney Ravenswood

he "voice crying in the wilderness", at the beginning of Bolero - The Peacock's Tale , is that of John the Baptist (Isaiah 40:3). Subsequently, we "see" represented, in the unfolding colors of The Peacock's Tale , the three year ministry of Jesus. Again in the wilderness, (at the end of Bolero - The Peacock's Tale ) Jesus comes up against the son of darkness in Dawn Song . Similarly, the Children of Israel, at the end of their wilderness journey, come up against Jericho. The crucifixion takes place in The Battle of Glass Tears and Jesus' moment of greatest despair ("My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?") is portrayed in Prince Rupert's Lament . The silence following Prince Rupert's Lament represents the death of Jesus and Big Top : the resurrection.

"The Christian religion, was known to the ancients, and was not wanting at any time from the beginning of the human race until the time that Christ came in the flesh, from whence the true religion, that had existed previously, began to be called Christian."

- St. Augustine
The Fathers of the Church,
The Retractions, I, xiii, 3

"The most likely source of primary Christian mythology was the Tammuz cult in Jerusalem. Like Tammuz, Jesus was the Bridegroom of the Daughter of Zion. Therefore his bride was Anath, or 'Virgin Wisdom Dwelling in Zion.' Who was also the mother of God. Her dove descended on him at his baptism, signifying (in the old religion) that she chose him for the love-death. Anath broke her bridegroom's reed scepter, scourged him and pierced him for fructifying blood. She pronounced his death curse, Mara-natha. As the Gospels said of Jesus, Anath's bridegroom was 'forsaken' by El, his heavenly father. Jesus' cry to El, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" seems to have been a line written for the second act of the sacred drama, the pathos of Passion."

- Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
by Barbara G. Walker

"What a lot of people do not realize is that this "Passion" was originally a sexual one. Jesus' last words 'It is consummated' were interpreted as a sign that his work was finished, but were actually lines echoing the completion of the marriage act of the "Hieros gamos," the sacred marriage, or the seating of the king on the throne of the World Tree, the Axis Mundi, represented by the Incarnated Goddess.

The "World Tree" of enthronement in Hieros Gamos with the Goddess, was inverted to represent the Cross of crucifixion with the coming of the Monotheistic degradation of the feminine. At some point, the cross came to represent the divine phallus. Some analysts have said that the temple represents the Mother goddess whose 'veil' was 'rent in the midst' as Jesus passed into death, but in actuality, the "temple" is the PLACE of the Axis Mundi which is either already designated, or can be created by the Hieros Gamos, or Sacred Marriage - the enthroning of the king."

- The Grail Quest and the Destiny of Man
by Laura Knight-Jadczyk

"Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude,
like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of
thunder, shouting:
"Hallelujah!
For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad
and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready."

- Revelation 19:6-7

"The 'lamb' of intuition 'had been slain,' or rendered dormant, but is now awakened.

Although dormant, in the sense of lacking self awareness, intuition, like integrity, has always been active through the other more explicit operations of the psyche: the autonomous and instinctual forces. They, in fact, form limited subsets of intuition. Self realization raises them from the realm of unconscious activity into the light of conscious and wilful control."

- Dance of Ecstasy
by Michael Wassil

"For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west;
so shall be the coming of the Son of man."

- Matthew 24:27

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