QUOTATIONS FROM THE GNOSTIC JUNG BY STEPHAN HOELLER

“Gnosis, as envisioned by such men as Valentinus, Basilides, and their fellows, is the experience of totality or wholeness. This wholeness must be lived in time and must also be experienced in timelessness.” (The Gnostic Jung, p. 151)

“The serpent in the psyche is matched also by the serpent of matter itself. There is much evidence indicating that whenever the mind confronts an unknown or severely repressed force within itself, a corresponding constellation arises in the outer, physical world.” (TGJ, p. 173)

“There is one more grand design, one final alchemical vessel in which the two opposites, the dove [my note: Jung never called the “white bird” a dove, he may just as easily have been referring to Athena’s owl] and serpent, must meet: it is the human being, the new and the eternal Anthropos. In the starry height, in the seventh region of heaven, the archetype and prototype of the Anthropos rides in his solar chariot. The head of the bird joined to the serpent feet by a human torso and arms reveals the figure of Abraxas as the union of sky and earth, of the bird and the snake. ‘In this world,’ say the Sermons, ‘man is Abraxas.’ From the Gnosis of humanity a new Abraxas is born.” (TGJ, p. 173)


“Jung, in his studies of the mandala geometric designs which arise from the depths of the unconscious, came to the conclusion that in these mandalas…one can find the expression of the Anthropos or ‘complete man.’” (TGJ, p. 173-174)

“If the gods have indeed departed from the center of the contemporary mandala, in their stead we may have to accept humanity. This humanity, this Anthropos at the center of the mandala, should not, must not be a puny product of nineteenth century rationalism; it must not be a statistically designed consumer-robot drafted by corporation executives; or an outdated Marxist image of the proletarian revolutionary who naively believes that the basic evils of human nature can be solved by political force and economic change. Rather, the new man and woman must be like Abraxas: with head overshadowed by the Logos of wisdom and insight, with swift feet that possess the instinctual force and libidinal resilience of the serpent. These opposites in turn must be joined and welded together by qualities of true and undisguised humanity, a humanity for which no moral, economic or political apologies are required.” (TGJ, p. 175)