Jung and the Kabbalah.pdf

JUNG AND THE KABBALAH

Sanford L. Drob

The following article is based on a presentation delivered at the American Psychological Association's Annual

Convention, August, 1998. It originally appeared in History of Psychology. May, 1999 Vol 2(2), pp. 102-118.

A more detailed discussion of Jung and the Kabbalah appears in Kabbalistic Metaphors, Chapter 8, pp. 289-343. In

a forthcoming book I will provide a detailed analysis of Jung¹s relationship with National Socialism, and discuss in

greater detail what I regard to be Jung¹s teshuvah (penitence) during and after his 1944 heart attack, after which he

experienced Kabbalistic visions and saw himself as Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai.

Summary: Jung's use of Kabbalistic symbols and ideas as well as his personal Kabbalistic vision are critically

examined. It is argued that as great as Jung's acknowledged affinity is to the Kabbalah, his unacknowledged

relationship was even greater. Jung has been accused of being a contemporary Gnostic. However, the interpretations

which Jung places on Gnosticism and the texts which Jung refers to on alchemy, were profoundly Kabbalistic, so

much so that one would be more justified in calling the Jung of the Mysterium Coniunctionis and other late works, a

Kabbalist in contemporary guise. While Jung, at least during 1930s, appears to have had powerful motives which

limited his receptivity to Jewish ideas, his highly ambivalent and at times reproachable attitude toward Judaism

should not prevent us from appreciating the affinities between Jungian psychology and Jewish mystical thought.

_______

In a letter to the Reverend Erastus Evans, written on the 17th of February 1954, Carl Jung described the excitement

of his first encounter with the Kabbalistic symbols of Shevirat ha-Kelim (the breaking of the vessels) and tikkun

haolam (the restoration of the world):

In a tract of the Lurianic Kabbalah, the remarkable idea is developed that man is destined to become God's

helper in the attempt to restore the vessels which were broken when God thought to create a world. Only a

few weeks ago, I came across this impressive doctrine which gives meaning to man's status exalted by the

incarnation. I am glad that I can quote at least one voice in favor of my rather involuntary manifesto (Jung,

1973, Vol. 2, p. 157).

Several years later, in a letter to a Ms. Edith Schroeder who had inquired regarding "the significance of Freud's

Jewish descent for the origin, content and acceptance of psychoanalysis." Jung replies:

....one would have to take a deep plunge into the history of the Jewish mind. This would carry us beyond

Jewish Orthodoxy into the subterranean workings of Hasidism...and then into the intricacies of the

Kabbalah, which still remains unexplored psychologically (Jung, 1973, Vol. 2, pp. 358-9).

Jung then informs Ms. Schroeder that he himself could not perform such a task because he has no knowledge of

Hebrew and is not acquainted with all the relevant sources.

In point of fact, Jung, in the last decades of his life, had taken a deep interest in the psychological aspects of a

number of Kabbalistic symbols and ideas; ideas which he had been exposed to primarily through his reading of 16th

and 17th century alchemical texts, and, especially, through the writings of the Christian Kabbalist and alchemist,

Christian Knorr Von Rosenroth (1636-89). As a result, Jung's last great work, Mysterium Coniunctionis, completed

in his 80th year in 1954, though ostensibly a treatise on alchemy, is filled with discussions of such Kabbalistic

symbols as Adam Kadmon (Primordial Man), the Sefirot, and the union of the "Holy One" and his bride. These

symbols became important pivots around which Jung constructed his final interpretations of such notions as the

archetypes and the collective unconscious, and his theory of the ultimate psychological purpose of humankind.

Yet as great as Jung's acknowledged affinity is to the Kabbalah, his unacknowledged relationship was even greater.

For every reference to the Kabbalah in Jung's writings there are several to Gnosticism, and perhaps dozens to

alchemy: yet the interpretations which Jung places on Gnosticism (itself a close cousin to the Kabbalah), and the

very texts which Jung refers to on alchemy, were profoundly Kabbalistic, so much so that one could call the Jung of

the Mysterium Coniunctionis and other later works, a Kabbalist (albeit a Christian one) in contemporary guise.

Jung has frequently been called a "Gnostic." Interestingly, Jung¹s main accuser in this regard was the Jewish

philosopher, Martin Buber, who is well known for, amongst other things, his work on Hasidism. Buber held that

Jung was Gnostic because he reduced God to the inner divine spark in humans and identified religious experience

with a turning inward into the Self, as opposed to a participation in relations with others as the vehicle for relating to

a transcendent God (Buber, 1952; see also Dourley, 1994)). Conversely, the Christian "death of God" theologian,

Thomas J. J. Altizer, hailed Jung¹s "Gnosticism" as part of his proof of the death of a transcendent God, which,

through Christ, had become completely immanent in humankind (Altizer, 1959, see also Segal, 1992).

For reasons which I will detail in this paper, it is my view that Jung is far more Kabbalistic than he is Gnostic, and

he is "alchemical" largely to the extent that the alchemists borrowed from and relied upon Kabbalistic ideas. I will

also argue that in the 1930s, when Jung was formulating a psychology based on his reading of alchemy, he had a

strong motive to suppress the "Jewish" origins of many alchemical ideas.

In this essay, I argue that Jung ultimately read Gnosticism in such a manner as to transform a radical anti-cosmic,

anti-individualistic doctrine into a world-affirming basis for an individual psychology. Further, I will show that he

interpreted alchemy so as to extract its Kabbalistic spiritual and psychological core. Had Jung been sufficiently

familiar with the Kabbalists (and Hasidim), his task could have been far easier, for their writings would have

provided Jung a psychologically richer and more sympathetic symbolism than either the "other worldly" theories of

the Gnostics, or the radically material practice of the alchemists. Indeed, in some instances the Gnostics, the

alchemists, and the Kabbalists share the same symbols and images (e.g., the "sparks," "Primordial Man") but in each

case the Kabbalistic approach to these symbols is the closest to Jung's own. In short, by providing a "this-worldly"

interpretation of Gnosticism, and a spiritual-psychological interpretation of alchemy, Jung arrived at a view which

was in many ways Kabbalistic in spirit. Indeed, Jung, in his interpretation of alchemy, succeeded remarkably in

extracting the Kabbalistic gold which lay buried in the alchemists¹ texts and methods (to use an alchemical

metaphor). His work can then be profitably understood as falling in the tradition of those thinkers such as Pico della

Mirandola, Johannnes Reuchlin (1983), and Knorr von Rosenroth who created a distinctively Christian Kabbalah

(Scholem, 1974, [pp. 196-201]).

Jung can be interpreted as a contemporary Kabbalist, yet one who provides the basis for a radical psychological

interpretation of the Kabbalists¹ symbols and ideas. Such an interpretation was not altogether foreign to the

Kabbalists themselves, who, on the principle of the microcosm mirroring the macrocosm, held that their own

descriptions of cosmic events were also, and equally profoundly, descriptions of the dynamics within men's souls

(Idel, 1988, 1995). Indeed, such an interpretation of the Kabbalah provided the major impetus for the doctrines of

the Hasidim. Still, Jung took this psychologization process further than either the Kabbalists or Hasidim, living in a

pre-psychoanalytic age, could ever hope to do themselves.

The Kabbalah

The Kabbalah, the most developed expression of Jewish mysticism, is a vast subject that today commands its own

field of study. Rooted in early Jewish mysticism, and, regarded by many as a Jewish form of Gnosticism (Scholem ,

1961/1941, 1960), the Kabbalah achieved its own unique expression in the anonymous Sefer HaBahir, generally

regarded as the earliest extant text in this mystical genre (Scholem, 1987/1962). It is in this work that the theory of

the ten Sefirot, the value archetypes (Will, Wisdom, Understanding, Kindness, Judgment, Beauty, Glory, Splendor,

Foundation and Kingship) which the Kabbalists all held to be the essence of creation, takes distinctive form. The

locus classicus, however, for the Sefirot and other Kabbalistic symbols, is the Zohar (Sperling & Simon, 1931-34;

Tishby & Lachower, 1989), traditionally attributed to the rabbinic sage Shimon Bar Yohai (with whom, as we shall

see, Jung identified himself), but thought by contemporary scholars to have originated in Spain some time in the

thirteenth century. The Zohar, which is written as a loose and far-reaching commentary on the Torah (the Five

Books of Moses), is the source of much of the "wedding symbolism" (unifications of the various Sefirot) which

preoccupied the alchemists studied by Jung. Its homilies on the nature of the unknowable infinite, the masculine and

the feminine, and the relationship between good and evil can provide much of interest to analytic and archetypal

psychologists. Jung himself quoted a number of Zoharic passages, and appears to have been acquainted with both a

German and English translation of portions of this book.

It is, however, the radical reformulation of the Kabbalah, initiated by Isaac Luria (1534-1572 ) and recorded by his

disciples, notably Chayyim Vital (1542-1620), which is of the greatest interest from a Jungian perspective. Luria's

ideas were little known outside orthodox Jewish circles, however, until Gershom Scholem brought them to the

attention of the intellectual world in the 1930s and 40s (Scholem, 1961/1941). The Lurianic Kabbalah is of interest

in part because of its systematic and dynamic treatment of many of the symbols and conceptions of the earlier

Kabbalah (see Elior, 1993, Jacobs, 1987, Schochet, 1981 and Scholem 1973, 1974).

Jung's Familiarity with the Kabbalah

Jung does not appear to have had any in-depth knowledge of the original texts of the Kabbalah. While Mysterium

Coniunctionis includes citations to the Sperling and Simon English translation of the Zohar (first published in 1931-

4) as well as to a German translation of the Zohar by Ernst Mueller (Jung, 1963, pp. 634, 47), the majority of Jung's

specific citations to Kabbalistic symbols and ideas are to the writings of Knorr Von Rosenroth, whose Kabbalah

Denudata, published in 1684 is a Latin translation of passages from the Zohar, other Kabbalistic writings, and essays

on the meaning of the Kabbalah (Scholem, 1974). Knorr¹s work was the most important non-Hebrew reference on

the Kabbalah up until the close of the 19th century and was the major source on the Kabbalah for non-Jewish

scholars at least up to that time. Knorr, writing after the advent and dissemination of the Lurianic Kabbalah, includes

(amongst many other things) Latin translations of portions of the Zohar, Cordovero¹s Pardes Rimmonim, a detailed

explanation of the Kabbalistic tree after Luria, and even some of the writings of Luria himself.

Jung had "visions" inspired by the symbolism of the Kabbalist Moses Cordovero (Jung, 1961. Pp. 293-5), and

Cordovero's Pardes Rimonim is cited in the bibliography of Mysterium Coniunctionis, but the only actual reference

is in a single footnote, and this is cited through Knorr (Jung, 1963, p. 22). While Jung was clearly aware of the

writings of Gershom Scholem, he appears not to have read them closely prior to 1954. Otherwise he would have

undoubtedly been familiar with certain doctrines of the Lurianic Kabbalah such as the breaking of the vessels and

tikkun prior to the date he acknowledges in his letter to Evans in February of that year. Jung carried on a

correspondence with a number of students who had first-hand knowledge of Kabbalistic texts and even

acknowledges to R. J. Zwi Werblosky that he received a copy of the Kabbalist R. Gikatila¹s text on dreams (Jung,

1973, Vol. 2, p. 122), but the overwhelming evidence in both the Mysterium and the Letters is that Jung derived his

working knowledge of the Kabbalah from Knorr Von Rosenroth, references to the Kabbalah in the writings of such

alchemists as Dorn, and an occasional perusal of the French and German literature on the Kabbalah extant before the

field was thoroughly transformed by Scholem.

Jung's limited familiarity with Kabbalistic texts and ideas in no way prevented him from commenting profoundly

and in some detail on certain Kabbalistic symbols, such as the Sefirot, of which he was aware.

The major Kabbalistic ideas which concerned Jung were those that had clear parallel formations in Gnosticism and

alchemy: the notion of a spark of divine light contained within humanity, the concept of Primordial Adam who

contains within himself in coincidentia oppositorum the various conflicting tendencies within the human spirit, the

theory of divine unifications, particularly the unifications of good and evil and masculine and feminine. In spite of

an occasional reference to Luria, absent from any detailed consideration in Jung's major works are the symbols of

Tzimtzum (Divine Contraction), Shevirah (the "Breaking of the Vessels", Tikkun Haolam (the "Restoration of the

World) which are unique to the Lurianic Kabbalah. It is true, however, that just as these Lurianic concepts were

implicit in the Kabbalah that preceded Luria (e.g., the Zohar), they are, as we will see, also implicit in the alchemical

writings which borrowed so heavily from the earlier Kabbalah. Had Jung considered these symbols prior to 1954,

they would have been of invaluable service to him, not only in his attempt to grasp the spiritual and psychological

nature of alchemy, but also in the expression of his own psychology of the self.

Jung's Interpretive Method

Jung's interpretation of Gnosticism, indeed his interpretation of religious phenomena in general, rests upon his

theory of the history of the human psyche (Segal, 1992, pp. 11-13). According to Jung, humankind has historically

moved from a condition in which it projects the contents of its unconscious onto the world and heavens to one in

which, as a result of a total identification with the rational powers of the ego, it has not only withdrawn its

projections from the world but fails completely to recognize the archetypes of the unconscious mind. These

archetypes, however, reappear in the form of neurotic symptoms. Jung writes:

The gods have become diseases; Zeus no longer rules Olympus but rather the solar plexus, and produces

curious specimens for the doctor¹s consulting room, or disorders the brains of politicians and journalists

who unwittingly let loose psychic epidemics on the world. (Jung, 1967, p. 37)

Psychology, specifically Jungian psychology, is in a position to provide individuals with a direct awareness of the

archetypes within their own psyches. This, Jung believes, can be accomplished through an interpretation of the

spontaneous symbolic projections of the unconscious in fantasy, art, and dreams, guided by a new psychological

understanding of the basic archetypal images which have presented themselves in the history of myth and religion.

Jung turns to this history for a catalogue or map of the contents of the collective unconscious and he interprets his

patients¹ (archetypal) dreams and images accordingly. His interest in the "dead" religion of Gnosticism, as well as in

the forgotten science of alchemy, lies in the fact that their symbols presumably contain a more or less pristine

crystallization of the collective unconscious, undisturbed by the ego oriented reinterpretations of reason and dogma.

Indeed the long incognizance of the Kabbalah in official Judaism suggests that it too preserves elements of the

collective unconscious in a relatively pure form.

Jung and Gnosticism: The Seven Sermons To the Dead

Jung's interpretation of Gnosticism is critical to his understanding of the Kabbalah. This is not only because many of

the major Kabbalistic themes are anticipated in the Gnostic sources with which Jung was familiar, but because

Jung¹s general approach to both alchemy and the Kabbalah was shaped by his interpretation of the Gnostics.

The identity of Gnosticism is itself open to considerable debate (see Filoramo, 1990; Robinson, 1988; Rudolph,

1987; on the Jewish origin of Gnosticism see Scholem, 1946, 1960; and Wilson, 1975). Traditionally Gnosticism

was viewed as a Christian heresy which developed along-side the early Catholic Church in the second and third

centuries. The discovery in 1945 of a library of Gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi along the Nile River in Egypt, and

their eventual publication, has led to a view of Gnosticism as a multifaceted religious phenomenon independent of

Christianity.

The origins of Gnosticism are far from clear. Some scholars, notably Quispel (Jonas, 1965), have hypothesized a

Jewish origin to this syncretistic religious phenomenon. Other scholars have looked to the Qumran texts of the Dead

Sea Scrolls and other apocryphal texts of Judaism, e.g., The Book of Wisdom and The Book of Enoch, which date

from just before and during the advent of the Christian era, for the origins of the Gnostic quest for ontological

knowledge and personal illumination (Filoramo, 1990).

Scholars have also differed in opinions regarding the identity and defining characteristics of Gnosticism, some

pointing, for example, to its dualism of good and evil, others to its theories regarding the aeons, and the demiurge.

However, the Congress of Messina on the origins of Gnosticism distinguished between "gnosis" in general as

"knowledge of the divine mysteries reserved for an elite" and "Gnosticism" proper, which it defined as follows:

The Gnosticism of the second-century sects involves a coherent series of characteristics that can be

summarized in the idea of a divine spark in man, deriving from the divine realm, fallen into this world of

fate, birth, and death, and needing to be awakened by the divine counterpart of the self in order to be finally

reintegrated (into the divine realm). (Filoramo, 1990, p. 143)

Jung's comments on Gnosticism are scattered throughout his writings (See Segal, 1992), but his major statement on

the subject is contained in his essay "Gnostic symbols of the self" (Jung, 1969). However, long before he had

systematically considered Gnosticism from the point of view of his own analytical psychology, Jung had been

familiar with Gnostic theology and even constructed, in 1916, his own "Gnostic Myth" which he had circulated

privately amongst friends but which, at his own request, was excluded from his collected works (but published in

Segal, 1992). In this myth, entitled "Septem Sermones ad Mortuos" (Seven Sermons to the Dead) Jung registers a

number of "Gnostic" themes to which he was to return many times in his later writings .

Amongst these themes, perhaps the most significant and pervasive is a concern with the coincidence of opposites

and the unification of antinomies. "Harken", Jung writes, "I begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same as

fullness. In infinity full is no better than empty. Nothingness is both empty and full" (Segal, 1992, p. 181). The

"pleroma" (or fullness of being which for the Gnostics is the equivalent of the Kabbalistic Ein-Sof, the infinite) is

characterized, Jung tells us, by "pairs of opposites", such as "living and dead", "Good and Evil", "Beauty and

Ugliness", "the one and the many". These opposites are equal and hence void in the pleroma but are "distinct and

separate" in the human mind.

A variety of other typically Gnostic themes make their appearance in "The Seven Sermons". Amongst these are the

doctrine that humans, as finite creatures, are characterized by "distinctiveness," and the natural striving of

humankind is towards distinctiveness and individuation. However, this battle against sameness and consequent death

is ultimately futile because our pursuit of various distinctions inevitably leads us to seize each of their opposites. In

pursuing good and beauty we necessarily lay hold of evil and ugliness as well. Hence, humans should not strive after

difference, which is at any rate, illusory, but rather after their own Being, which leads them to an existential (rather

than an epistemological) awareness of the pleromatic "star" which is humanity¹s ultimate essence and goal (Segal,

1992).

Jung's prescription for humankind in "The Seven Sermons" is significant because it appears to be so typically

Gnostic. This world of distinctiveness and individuation offers humans nothing. They must turn their backs on the

world of "creatura" and follow their inner star beyond this cosmos, for, according to Jung:

Weakness and nothingness here, there eternally creative power. Here nothing but darkness and chilling

moisture. There wholly sun. (Segal, 1992, p. 193)

Years later, when Jung comes to take a second look at Gnosticism through the eyes of a more fully developed

archetypal psychology, he reverses himself and interprets it in a manner which is far more friendly to the world and

the individual, and, as I will argue, far more Kabbalistic than Gnostic.

Jung's Interpretation of Gnosticism

Jung eventually interpreted the Gnostic myths, including the origin of the cosmos in the Pleroma, the emergence of

an ignorant God or demiurge, the creation of a Primordial Man, and the placing of a spark of divinity within

individual persons, in completely psychological terms. The Gnostic myths do not, according to Jung, refer to cosmic

or even external human events, but rather reflect the basic archetypal developments of the human psyche. Jung

regards the pleroma, within which is contained the undifferentiated unity of all opposites and contradictions, as

nothing but the primal unconscious from which the human personality will emerge. The "demiurge", whom the

Gnostics disparaged as being ignorant of its pleromatic origins, represents the conscious, rational ego, which in its

arrogance believes that it too is both the creator and master of the human personality. The spark, or scintilla, which

is placed in the human soul, represents the possibility of the psyche's reunification with the unconscious, and the

primal anthropos (Adam Kadmon or Christ), which is related to this spark, is symbolic of the "Self", the achieved

unification of a conscious, individuated personality with the full range of oppositions and archetypes in the

unconscious mind. "Our aim," Jung tells us, "is to create a wider personality whose centre of gravity does not

necessarily coincide with the ego," but rather "in the hypothetical point between conscious and unconscious" (Jung,

1929/1968, p. 45). Jung sees in the Gnostic (and Kabbalistic) symbol of Primordial Man a symbol of the goal of his

own analytical psychology.

Jung's Interpretation of Alchemy

Jung provides a similar if more daring and far reaching interpretation of alchemy. According to Jung, what the

alchemist sees in matter, and understands in his formulas for the transmutation of metals and the derivation of the

prima materia, "is chiefly the data of his own unconscious which he is projecting into it" (Jung, 1937/1968, p. 228).

For example, the alchemist¹s efforts to bring about a union of opposites in the laboratory and to perform what is

spoken of as a "chymical wedding" are understood by Jung as attempts to forge a unity, e.g., between masculine and

feminine, or good and evil aspects of the psyche (Jung, 1937/1968). "The alchemical opus", Jung tells us, "deals in

the main not just with chemical experiments as such, but with something resembling psychic processes expressed in

pseudochemical language" (Jung, 1932/1968, p. 242).

I n his Mysterium Coniunctionis Jung (1955-6/1963) provides a catalog of alchemical symbols which are rich in

spiritual and psychological significance. Many of the most significant of these symbols, including the notions of

Adam Kadmon, the divine spark in humanity, the union of the cosmic King and Queen, and the divine nature of evil

(each of which Jung regarded as foundational for his later psychology) were imported into alchemy from the

Kabbalah.

Kabbalah and Alchemy

Jung himself was aware of the strong relationship between the Kabbalah and late alchemy, and frequently spoke of

specific Kabbalistic influences on the alchemists of the 16th century and later. "Directly or indirectly", Jung (1955-

6/1963)writes in the Mysterium, "the Cabala was assimilated into alchemy. Relationships must have existed between

them at a very early date, though it is difficult to trace them in the sources" (p. 24; cf. p. 384). Jung points out that by

the end of the 16th century the alchemists began making direct quotations from the Zohar. For example, he provides

a quotation from Blasius Vigenerus (1523-96) comparing the feminine sefirah Malchut with the moon turning its

face from the intelligible things of heaven (Jung, 1955-6/1963, p. 24). He points to a number of alchemists,

including Khunrath and Dorn who made extensive use of the Kabbalistic notion of Adam Kadmon as early as the

16th century, and informs us that works by Reuchlin (De Arte Kabalistica, 1517) and Mirandola had made the

Kabbalah accessible to non-Jews at that time (Jung, 1955-6/1963, see also Reuchlin, 1983). Both Vigenerus and

Knorr Von Rosenroth, Jung informs us, attempted to relate the alchemical notion of the lapis or philosopher¹s stone

to passages in the Zohar which interpret biblical verses (Job 38:6, Isaiah, 28:16, Genesis 28:22) as making reference

to a stone with essential, divine and transformative powers (Jung, 1955-6/1963). He also notes that Paracelsus had

introduced the sapphire as an "arcanum" into alchemy from the Kabbalah. Two of the alchemists most frequently

quoted by Jung (Knorr and Khunrath) wrote treatises on the Kabbalah, and others such as Dorn and Lully were

heavily influenced by Kabbalistic ideas. These authors included a notion of the "sparks", which was to become a key

element in the Lurianic Kabbalah, and gave it a Kabalistic (as opposed to Gnostic) interpretation in their work.

While Jung clearly recognizes the relationship between Kabbalah and alchemy, he only provides us with part of the

story. The spiritual aspects of alchemy, which interested Jung, were to a very large extent Jewish in origin. Even

Jung¹s own view of alchemy appears to have its origins in Jewish sources. Maria the Prophetess, the Egyptian

Hellenistic Jewess who is regarded by Zosimos (3d century) to be the founder of alchemy (and by modern

scholarship to be amongst its earliest practitioners), viewed the alchemical work as fundamentally a process through

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