Carl Jung : Osiris, Jesus and Zarathustra

Osiris and Atum, Nefertari Tomb

NIETZSCHE'S ZARATHUSTRA

NOTES OF THE SEMINAR GIVEN IN 1934-1939 BY C. G.JUNG

LECTURE IV

3I October 1934

"(...) Egypt was the foremost cultural power in the Near East. It lasted longer than Babylon, which was destroyed by the Persians while Egypt was still guarding the old traditions. Egypt is chiefly responsible for the drama of the collective unconscious between 4000 and 100 B.C. The main religious thought which was handed down through the ages was the divinity of the Pharaoh, the king; and the god-man, the savior, the Osiris, the image of the soul. Osiris was an original god of Egypt, just as old as Ra, yet he was always different from Ra, the sun god. He was a sort of god-man, the dying and resurrecting hero god. He was first understood to be a god and then he became the soul, the Osiris, of the Pharaoh.

As the king was in a way Ra, he was also Osiris, the dying and resurrecting hero. So Osiris became the mediator between the gods and men. Therefore, the surface of the walls of the temples are covered on the outside with representations of the worldly feats of the king, and inside with pictures of the god-king having intercourse with the gods. Outside, he is the great figure of the land, the political hero, with little warrior figures round him, little soldiers to slay his enemies; and inside the temple, he is the god-man who converses with the gods. He receives the blessing or the sign of ankh from the hands of the gods, or he offers the ankh to the gods. They receive life from him through the royal offering.

Now, this figure of Osiris is very clearly an anticipation of Jesus or of the Christus idea, so clearly that even the Catholic church - which is rather hesitant in such matters - permits the theory that Isis and the Horus child are an anticipation of Mary and the Christ Child, as Osiris is an anticipation of the Lord Jesus. The Christian idea was chiefly influenced by the mystical ideas of Egypt; there were similar ideas in Babylonian culture, but I think the main origin of Christianity is to be found in Egypt. So the figure of Christ, to us an entirely symbolical figure, is the interpretation of that old Osiris myth of Egypt. But he was not a symbolic figure to the early Middle Ages or to antiquity. He was a real fact, as the mother Mary was of course a virgin. All those things happened in reality, and in the Catholic church you are still forced to believe in the absolute fact of the virgin birth. Of course, we cannot help seeing that it must be symbolic. Even if the man Jesus existed at all, the story of his life is not historical. It is clearly mythology, like the mythology of Attis, or Adonis, or Mithras; that was all syncretistically put together into the figure of the Christus. We are not quite imbued with the conviction that the crucifixion, the virgin birth, and the story of the temptation is symbolism, and therefore we know something which former ages have not known.

Our problem now is: what does it mean ? what is our interpretation ? Zarathustra is, to a certain extent, an interpretation of our Christian idea. And individuation is now our mythology. Then what is individuation ? It is a great mystery, a boundary concept: we don't know what it is. We call it the uniqueness of a certain composition or combination, and beyond that we can say nothing about it. To us it is a reality, yet it is a reality just on the boundary line of human understanding, and in two thousand years they will probably say that the whole idea of individuation was nothing but symbolism. And then they will have some new idea to tell about: there will be another Zarathustra perhaps, or any other attempt. A sort of revelation will take place which will suddenly put an entirely different light upon the hitherto prevailing theory. You see, if Zarathustra had appeared two thousand years ago, if he had been a Budda in the first century, for instance, when Buddhism began to spread over Tibet and Southern China, he would have been one of the great teachers of the Mahayana with a red or a yellow hat. We are still too close to have any relation to it, any historical perspective, but at a future time-assuming that people continue as they have done hitherto- they may say Zarathustra is the great teacher, the red hat teacher or something of the sort. They will perhaps invent a name.

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Mr. Baumann: I think this process by which the figure of god becomes symbolical is like the idea of the god going back into the sky, or the stars, or into any idea of remoteness; it happens in every religion to a certain extent. For instance, the Greek gods lived on the earth, on Olympus, and then in the Roman Empire came the idea of the pantheon of the gods. They were removed to the sky.

Dr. Jung: That is true. You know, there were attempts in antiquity to transform the absolutely concrete gods of Olympus into more mental beings. They became ideas. Jupiter, for instance, was made into a philosophical concept. And at the same time, in their concrete form, those primitive gods degenerated completely. They became ridiculous and were neglected. They just decayed and vanished, and were then superseded by Eastern religions imported from Palestine, Asia Minor, Egypt, etc. This process happened everywhere at that time.

The Egyptian priesthood had become highly philosophical, so that a god of the fifth or fourth century B.C. , say, was no longer concrete; it was already a philosophical idea. Naturally for the vulgar people it was still a concrete god, as is the case in India today. For instance, Professor von Glasenapp, a German Sanskritist, told me of meeting a Brahman in a temple where the people were worshipping a gorgeous and thoroughly barbarous sculptured image of Vishnu. The two men were walking up and down in the courtyard, talking of the Upanishads, and von Glasenapp asked the priest why he allowed those people to worship such an image if he believed in that philosophy. And he replied:

"But can they grasp the Upanishads ? Let them worship the image, because in this the whole philosophy of the Upanishads is expressed."

That is a very superior point of view, and I am certain that the Egyptian priests had such a philosophy too, but it was so well guarded that it never was betrayed. Surely the subsequent world of ideas, the apparently sudden explosion of that enormous fantastical philosophy called "The Gnosis" is due to the ideas of the Egyptian priesthood. They were no longer held sufficiently within the precints of the temples; something filtered through the walls. But the main body of their ideas died out simply because they were never betrayed . We know precious little of them. So I am convinced that early Christianity originated in the secret teaching which somehow filtered through when the temples became obsolete and the religious forms of Egypt began to degenerate.

The fact that there was, in the time immediately before and after the appearance of Jesus, an enormous development of thought of a very new and different kind, is too unaccountable otherwise. Plutarch, who was an Egyptian initiate, gives in his book about Isis and Osiris the philosophical interpretation of their mysteries. And Herodotus, many centuries before, was an initiate, but he was not allowed to speak about them ! The initiations probably consisted of a sort of philosophical teaching in which the secret meaning of the images, the sacred signs, and names was explained. There are many very obvious symbolic allusions on the Mithraic monuments, for instance, which must have been explained to the initiates. The rites were always secret because the secret meanings were spoken or alluded to. And the early Christians also had their mysteries. Baptism and communion belong to the mysteries: baptism was initiation.

Mr. Baumann: Would one not say that Christ had turned into a philosophical idea? Dr. Jung: As soon as we say of a thing that it is symbolic, it is already a philosophical idea, whether it is formulated or not. The idea of Christ is only just becoming a philosophical idea, for there are people who still think he is personal, a real man, a real presence, and they grow quite afraid when one says otherwise. The Lord Buddha was a man like Jes us; he was real, but he has become a symbol . He is not even called by his real name; that is a ritual name. Or he is called the Tathagata, meaning "the perfect one, the accomplished one." He is a symbol; he is the idea of perfection. And so Christ is for us the idea of a human individual that has attained to the state of perfection.

Prof Fierz: He was named Jesus and we call him Christ.

Dr. Jung: Yes, by giving him a ritual name, we have already declared him to be a symbol. Chrisma means ointment, and Christ is the annointed one, the baptized one ; he is the symbol of the initiated one. His real name is most ordinary. Jesus is a name like Muller or Smith.

Mrs. Crowley: Would you not say that, in the main, the more philosophical these gods have become-the more they have become abstract ideas-the less vital they are as gods ? They seem to be so bloodless and lifeless. That image of Sophia is nothing compared with Isis.

Dr.Jung: Yes, they evaporate into thin smoke, but then the idea itself takes a new form which is exceedingly vital. For instance, the old idea of Osiris being one complete god evaporated and became the Osiris of the king. Then it was the Osiris of the grand vizier, and the high priest, and the treasurer, and so on; and finally it was just everybody. Smith and Jones and everybody had their Osiris. The Osiris of Mr. Smith was a perfectly good Osiris, but with that the whole idea was banalized. Osiris became a sort of immortal genius of everybody and no longer had any particular value. So that symbol vanished and was replaced by a new idea, namely, a new man. And the new idea suddenly became exceedingly vital, because he was a man and a king at the same time; the great point was that, though he was a king, yet he was from the low ones. He was even of disreputable birth ; human misery was a cradle for the divine man. That of course was a great message. But now the idea of individuation, as portrayed by the symbol of Christ, the divine man, is thin smoke because it is abstract; while for Mr. Smith to discover that he is an individual is at least two million volts. You know what it meant for all the low ones, the prostitutes and the tax-collectors and the illegitimate children and the illegitimate mothers, to know that from among them the god-man had come ; so you can appreciate what it means when Mr. Smith discovers that he is an individual.

Now, Zarathustra rightly wants to find his companions; it is a mistake only if he seeks his companions instead of himself, instead of his own humanity or his body. If Zarathustra were a real man and had accomplished the Superman in himself, it would be quite natural that companions would come to him. He would not go to seek them. Have you ever heard of gold running after people ? The gold is hidden in the clefts of the earth and is just waiting; it is always gold in itself and will always be sought for. If there is really a good thing, it is sought for : that is the characteristic of the good thing. The mountain comes to the prophet, the prophet never goes to the mountain. If any prophet is seen going to the mountain, you may know he has made a mistake. He had much better stay at home and leave the mountain to itself.

Therefore, all this missionary talk here is of course the hunger. If anybody wants to "missionarize" the world and to tell people what is good for them , it means that he is hungry ; he wants to fill his belly with the corpses of other people. His own ideas are hungry, his own soul; and other people are feeding his thoughts and appetites because he is unable to feed them himself. If you discover what you call a truth, you should test it, try to eat it. If it feeds you it is good, but if you cannot live by it and only assume it ought to feed other people, then it is bad. The real test is that your truth should be good for yourself. Not one dog is coming to sniff at it if it doesn't feed yourself. If you are not satisfied with it, if you cannot enjoy it for twenty, fifty years, or a whole lifetime, it is no good. If you are hungry, if you think your companions must be redeemed, and that they must be grateful to you on top of all, then you make a mistake : you may know the idea is no good.

So don't play the missionary. Don't try to eat the goods of others. Let other people belong to themselves and look after their own improvement: let them eat themselves. If they are really satisfied, then nobody should disturb them. If they are not satisfied with what they possess, they will probably seek something better; and if you are the one who has the better thing, they will surely come and get if from you . It is an exaggeration, therefore, that Zarathustra wants to entice many away from the herd. He would quite rightly be called a robber by the shepherd. The sheep want to be with the shepherd, for otherwise the wolves eat them. He says he doesn't want to be the shepherd dog of a herd, so he should leave them with the shepherd ; they are much better off with a real shepherd than they would be as companions of that hungry wolf Zarathustra. I f he wants to have companions, let him go with the wolves; then he can hunt in a pack. With the sheep it is much too easy. You see, that is the attitude one ought to take with reference to the problem of individuation: no mission work, no preaching, and no enticing little children from their nurses, or sheep from the shepherd . Let them be with the shepherd, it is much better.

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