The Christ - Antichrist antinomy.

Let us make the effort to exclude all religious dogmatism, and maintain in psychological discourse.

It may be difficult as Christ as well as Antichrist are both very much religious symbols. However, they are also cultural ones and hence can be subjugated for rational discussion. I will base my argument to the notion that figure of Christ is most likely an archetypical image of self as a whole. Doctor C.G Jung, who was quite an adept with mythology and psychology, wrote:

Why my reader will ask do I discourse here upon Christ and his adversary, the Antichrist? Our discourse necessarily brings us to Christ, because he is the still living myth of our culture. He is our culture hero, who, regardless of his historical existence, embodies the myth of the divine Primordial Man, the mystic Adam.It is he who occupies the centre of the Christian mandala, who is the Lord of the Tetramorph, i.e., the four symbols of the evangelists, which are like the four columns of his throne. He is in us and we in him. His kingdom is the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in the field, the grain of mustard seed which will become a great tree, and the heavenly city. As Christ is in us, so also is his heavenly kingdom. These few, familiar references should be sufficient to make the psychological position of the Christ symbol quite clear. Christ exemplifies the archetype of the self.

(Jung C G 1959: pages 36-37)

So Christ - regardless of his historical existence - has become a hero-figure for large part of western world and culture. Christ, who belittled earthly rulers and authorities and would only accept the rule of the divine Father, his inner daemon. Summed up, he was only a guy (while not approving nor disapproving his historical existence) who lived up with his individual inner moral codes and not respecting those who were authoritarian like the pharisees.

If figure of Christ is to be understood as a self that is whole (for he had cast out of his shadow), then anti-christ could be understood as a shadow of the Christ, the antinomy and adversary, the unconscious opposite attitude for indivualitic self. So in this sense, what comes inside, can be understood to be coming from Christ (when speaking in analogy), and what comes outside, comes from antichrist.

So antichristic, in this sense, would be anything that comes from outside, be those religions, conceptions, ideologies and so on. It is kind of a decentralized blural entity, like a state or collective, which through the deindividualization is able to cause great benefits, but as well great miseries. Through it's power and prestige, it will devalue all individual efforts for truth, and only accepts collective truths.

Often Christ and it's antinomy, the Antichrist, will receive values attached to them by our culture. I will not judge either of them as good or bad, but I maintain that they are different in character. To be a christic, one is ought to renounce all external affects, dogmas and influences - one should only listen to the feeling inside. Contrary, to be anti-christic you'd welcome them as a 'laws' of how things work. You'd be collective, yielding under command of your society. You'd be a model citizen, a standard model for patriotic person.

In the end, one reading this should remember that we are dealing with symbols and analogies that cannot be fully understood intellectually. I am not religious person myself, but I wish to explore these mattesr, even as they areheavily loaded with religous nonesense. Simultaneously these legends and symbols are describing something about psychology of human being.

-v

reply to post by v01i0


...so .. If I say I was ... hypothetically (christ) and I have a twin .. he would be the (beast) .. the shadow of myself .. he who was born first and I split from him .. leaving behind some part of myself and inturn recreating self in another image yet similar but ..personality is differ...
.. Hmmm?.. makes since to me ..

reply to post by Vonour


Pretty much so if I understood your point.

Whenever we valuate anything, there is an opposite to our prefered value. Whenever we by ourselves act ill, we also know the other way we might have behaved. If we speak about 'how high', there is automatically included the connotation of 'low'.

-v

A good, complex, thought-provoking post.
Jung led a long and productive life, so it always depends when he wrote a specific piece in the wider context of his ideas. According to some of his female "devotees" in his circle, his later prophesies were deeply troubling and remain unpublished.
In Murray Stein's "Jung on Evil" it is suggested that at least in one stage Jung took Lucifer to be the shadow brother of Christ.
For me it goes back to the archetypes, which are inherited forms and symbols in our make up.
Just like Chomsky would argue about language, it is not merely learnt, but we have organic language receptors which must be switched on at a certain point in early childhood, although the specific language is irrelevant.
Similarly the archetypal forms must be filled with specific content.
I'm convinced that the Biblical anti-Christ was simply the "beast" for the persecuted Christians at the time of the Revelation, or the Emperor Nero (as gammatria makes clear by spelling out 666 as the name of Nero).
Everyone, it seems has a personal Jesus, and the saviour archetype is filled with contradictory cultural content, ranging from "The Prince of Peace" to a judgemental warmonger.
It seems the Christ-myth already embodies our own hopes and shadows sufficiently - it just cannot admit it's own violence and darkness, and needs to deflect these on the "other".
How strange: the anti-Christ will be a man of peace and bring about hope and unity (which the true Christ failed to do by implication). Only then will he show his true dictatorial colors and make war. In other words it is wrong to say "blessed be the peacemakers". The anti-Christ will first be a peace-maker. So rather trust people who propogate war and genocide - they may be slightly evil, but at least not the anti-Christ.
This astounding argument by Christian fundamentalists deflects from the evils of colonialism, the inter-Christian 20th century World Wars and continued poverty, greed and dwindling natural resources. It answers the Problem of Evil, since it suggests that evil is a part of God's plan. The anti-Christ can only appear to be the good peacemaker in juxtaposition to the human systems (including faiths) that we have at present.
It is really an argument that admits the failure of religions (especially its own ideology) and tries to find a purpose behind that failure (our violence will turn people to a pacifist guru, who in turn will eventually show his true evil face and bring on the second coming, when true peace will be retored on earth for the faithful).
Ultimately it preaches deep suspicion of any one interested in global peace and social justice.
This is deeply ironic.

reply to post by halfoldman


... You started of on the right foot .. and then .. you got twisted up ..and landed on your left...
... I will help you out here .. agan Hypothetically ..
... I am Christ ... my twin is the Beast ... . whom was born first . and came first as the False Prophet ..
... I was Killed .. and My brother took on the role as the Savior... now he .. declared war .. and this war seemed to have no end .. atleast to him...
... I was reborn ..through time .. and this .. Mistake (war) has come to an end .. which means everyone here alive today .. shall see lasting Peace .. not the War .. yes some still know of this war .. and even more do in the future but .. the time is now.. and the War is but a Memory in time .. an Echo ..of what once was... and I am ..whom I am .. returned... Your blinded judgement clouds your mind .. you must .. let your soul lead you out of the clouds to see beyond the veil before your eyes...



.. your way of thinking .. is what lead to .. my brother taking his place in the first place.. Listen to your heart(SOUL) not the logic inwhich you do not understand..

reply to post by v01i0


Let me play The Devil's Advocate here, literally...
______________________________________

Christ taught do unto others as you would have done unto you. In other words: treat others the way you like to be treated. But, I'm pretty sure not everyone likes to be treated the same way I like to be treated, always. Christians say they are a Christian, but they don't address this contradiction between the teachings and their actions and behaviors. Christians do not treat eveyone the same identical way, nor do they clarify this paradox.

Christians do not always treat everyone the same identical way. Yet, they build nations that force this upon other nations, and have more laws than they know how to count within one lifetime and call this freedom.

also, that damn "What Would Jesus Do" slogan.

Jesus left. that is what Jesus would do.

_____________________
As for the opposite of the Son of God, just perhaps the Father can be considered the opposite of Son.

just saying,
et

reply to post by halfoldman


In the light of your post and of what was written above (about it being plural, collective entity), would you say that UN is anti-christic? It was intented for peaceful purposes, but now it has become an institution of war. It is forcing cultures distinct to ours to abide in our conception of freedom and human rights...

I kinda reject the idea that there would be one single human being as antichrist. To me it seems like we all have christ and anti-christ within us, as if sides of a psychological coin of our character.

-v

Originally posted by Esoteric Teacher

Christ taught do unto others as you would have done unto you. In other words: treat others the way you like to be treated.

You have got point. I'd imagine that masochists with SM tendencies are living well up according the golden rule

-v

reply to post by v01i0

The UN is a pretty big issue that would need more thought and research for specific arguments.
Let's say that the League of Nations led to World War II, just as the UN has seen many wars. I'm not sure whether those are the failures of these organizations, or a deliberate conspiracy of divide, rule and profit. Arguably they should have more power and will to "enforce" peace, which is a paradoxical argument in itself. And then, the UN depends largely on the funding and goodwill of the US and some other key nations in practice, so it is not neutral.
For us in SA it is a disaster in the sense that we have failed states in Africa like Somalia and Zimbabwe, and instead of intervening in those failed states early on, our country is now flooded with refugees, when it can hardly afford them. It seems that interventionist war and appeasement are dictated by constructed issues related to finance, rather than consistent peace-keeping. So it would not fill the Hal Lindsay version of the anti-Christ (although the UN is often included as a footnote to apocalyptic conspiracies). It cannot and will bring not peace, not even temporarily, and is all about bringing the elites together to divide the pie.
A big memeplex like the UN can take on a life of its own, and despite these shortcomings there's probably many good people working within it.
Ultimately nation states are not where global dictartorship is at any longer. Corporations and brands have more power - even communist and Arab countries will allow "financial freedoms" for corporations, but not Western democracy. So the corporate dominance is already well entrenched where the UN babble of "human rights" is just a pipe dream.
However, the notion is that a model like the UN can always be reworked to suit fascist purposes, and when it actually imposes it's deadbeat ideology it could cause so much ecstasy that a leader who revitalizes it becomes God-like. Not at the moment however - people are too divided on culture and politics to follow one dude. All they agree on is that consumerism is great, so that is the influence to really watch for.

I worry though that the very ideology of the anti-Christ as the great peace-maker will keep humanity under divide and rule. If peace and unity are constructed as evil, people will follow the ridiculous notion that war equals peace. So the current content of that archetypal form is dangerous and unfortunate misinformation. Usually people only really want peace when they are in a highly destructive war, or they just had one. The countries where massive populations have those experiences are really quite powerless.
We have this paradox of dichotomies - anything that promises to be the ultimate good will be evil.
The anti-Christ is the wolf in sheep's clothing.
At least currently the UN has not been posited in that way, and it's actually a deeply flawed organization in the minds of many.

reply to post by Vonour


... I need to add my father to the hypothetical aswell..
... So .. there is a good chance . .he was the one responible for .. said event.. (devil, Lucifer
... He ofcourse was older and.. would of had more time to plan... a said event...
... Merely my brother would been the one whom was caught up in the .. war.. for I was not in the war I was already dead.... that is my miss understanding.. of time.. it would appear..
... ? ... I obviously need to think on this.. ..Me christ , Brother Anti-christ .. father Satan..hmmm?..
...
.. that leads the to saying = Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit
.... Father .. James ..twin brother born first ..John Paul... and me Mark ..36
..May even explain the KING JAMES bible.. ?...

As the anti-christ I can tell you that the only super power I have
is the ability to be more Christian than any Christian
and still leave a trail of destruction.

If you were me you would
laugh too, as their
own hypocrisy
causes them
to fail hard.

Yep, it's
a pretty
sweet
system.
Hats off to my bro.
All I have to do is join a church
get everyone inspired and trying to do what I do.
Because excessive Christianity is lethal.
All things in moderation.
I love my bro so much.

On judgement day
he and I are so
clean, and
everyone else
so splattered in filth.

For how do you throw mud at your own ideas
in a world where one is only judged on actions and not thoughts.
I never tell anyone to follow me, Jesus did.

The danger in psychology is that it's a very
poor toolset for judging thoughts as it's all onesided,
and Freud, Jung, Anna, Bernays and the gang all kept finding
the anti-christ but didn't realize why and projected their own great fears
onto the Gentile world and caused the very genocide they fled.
Because psychology is one sided it causes projection.
If both doctor _AND_ client were cross analyzing
each other, then maybe we could begin
to balance out the variables.
I bet current psychology
likes more trance like
relaxed patients who
are less interactive
than they are
normally.

Funny.


David Grouchy

reply to post by halfoldman

Originally posted by halfoldman
So the current content of that archetypal form is dangerous and unfortunate misinformation.

Thanks for the reply. I think I see what you mean. I found above quote very interesting.

I'd give you decent reply, but I have to hit the bed right now, so maybe tomorrow if I can still remember what I had to say.

-v

reply to post by v01i0

It's strange how we have a persistence of traditional partisan propaganda on the anti-Christ, and newer cultural forms. Traditionally the Catholics and Protestants have accused one another of being led by an anti-Christ (with some bizarre illustrations of either the "devilish" pope or Martin Luther). More recently e-mails did the rounds claiming that President Obama would be the anti-Christ (the first black anti-Christ?).
In my youth literalist Christians focused more on the New Age Movement as their rivals, and there were many conflated theories that the anti-Christ would arise from the tea-leave reading peaceniks. Now Islam has superceded all that as the new fifth-column (and such conspiracies see Obama not just as the anti-Christ ... but shock, horror ...as a MUSLIM!!!). Apparently the fantasy-Christian "Left Behind" books claim the anti-Christ will be born as the surrogate child of a gay couple. So it appears that everyone who deviates from the fundamentalist position gets a slap of the anti-Christ stick. Oh, and Iran, Russia and China always feature somewhere. How convenient.
Seems more like a born "black sheep" rather than the Biblical "wolf in sheep's clothing". The disguised wolf metaphor actually implies that the anti-Christ will rise from the very faithful themselves.
This embarrassing little trivia has led to a painstaking and tedious plethora of websites where different Christian sects and fans of differing evengelists slag off minute differences in each other's theology. You never know - Pat Robertson, John Hagee or Benny Hinn might just fit the description.

What is interesting culturally is the trope of the child as the anti-Christ. This seems to originate with the 1970's "The Omen" movies. It mirrors an interest in essentialist "bad seed" psychology. The esteemed innocence of childhood seems to have taken a symbolic knock.
But why the focus on a male-child?
If the anti-Christ mirrors the Christ then the focus should surely be on a 30-year-old man.

reply to post by halfoldman


One would need to be at least familiar with the sayings, found in the scripture regarding the "man-child" to understand why they built a plot around a child in the Omen.

And one would have to have intimate knowledge of the "Christ" to understand all the mysteries that surround him and the inner workings of the kingdom. From what Jung wrote he seems to really want to know and understand the mysteries, but remained clueless.

Originally posted by Myrtales Instinct
From what Jung wrote he seems to really want to know and understand the mysteries, but remained clueless.

Perhaps you want to explain what did you mean by above statement? He might've admitted that he does not know everything about human psyche and existence itself, but certainly did he know more than most. If you can claim that Jung remained clueless, you are impying that you by yourself know more. Please share you wisdom

On the end, here's a reply that doesn't seem to be from a guy who didn't knew about... Enjoy



-v

reply to post by davidgrouchy

Originally posted by davidgrouchy

The danger in psychology is that it's a very
poor toolset for judging thoughts as it's all onesided,
and Freud, Jung, Anna, Bernays and the gang all kept finding
the anti-christ but didn't realize why and projected their own great fears
onto the Gentile world and caused the very genocide they fled.

There's a danger in almost every tool to be misused as a murder weapon. It depends much on who uses it. I find Jung to be more balanced than Freud & Co. - I wish that you wouldn't put Jung in to their category, for he had totally different motives as far as I know.

-v

Important Technical Point

When Jung used the term Self, he meant God. You need to keep this in mind while you conduct your discussion.

The Self, to Jung, was a psychic entity, an archetype of the Collective Unconscious. As such, it can only have such physical reality and power as human minds and actions imbue it with. The Self represents the individuated, integrated personality in which the different inner forces symbolized by other archetypes are combined in their right order and proportions. In this state of mental development the individual feels a sense of unity with the forces of divine creation and destruction and a sense of control and purpose in life.

To Jung, individuation meant the reconciliation of psychic opposites, so the Self (God) is the final integration of all opposites. All antinomies, including Christ/Antichrist, are united and synthesized in the Self.

*

reply to post by v01i0

If the figure of Christ is to be understood as a self that is whole (for he had cast out of his shadow), then anti-christ could be understood as a shadow of the Christ, the antinomy and adversary, the unconscious opposite attitude for indivualitic self. So in this sense, what comes inside, can be understood to be coming from Christ (when speaking in analogy), and what comes outside, comes from antichrist.

You are mistaken, I'm afraid. Christ is not 'a self that is whole'. Christ is a partial Self, an ego-archetype. The Antichrist is Shadow. The Self arises by integration of the two.

A child (or a childish, psychologically naive person) tries to deny his own evil and irrational impulses by projecting them onto that which is not himself. This projection causes the Ego-Shadow split and the sense of separation between the ego and the world. The indiviudal Self has transcended such dichotomies and become integrated.

reply to post by Astyanax


I think you explained this better than I did. The Christ is not archetype of whole self, but rather the self. Thank you for the clarification. I went ahead of things...

-v

reply to post by halfoldman


I pretty much agree that the title of Anti-christ has been used as a political melee weapon to prevent some fundie christians of voting anybody.

Funny thing is, as it seems, most of us has the anti-christ element running amok - I mean our shadow of course, which we fear and avoid in every possible occassion. We keep it repressed so much that it can only appear in dreams, where it makes usually quite dramatic entrance. Or by unconscious acts that would shock us later and make us admit in shame: "that wasn't certainly my normal behaviour"

Maybe we should confront our dark-side, admit that we are not perfect, we are still blood-thirsty savages who just recently learned to act civilised? Confrontation does not imply to submission. At least acknowledgment of our shadow attitudes is half the victory.

-v

Originally posted by v01i0
reply to post by davidgrouchy

 

Originally posted by davidgrouchy

The danger in psychology is that it's a very
poor toolset for judging thoughts as it's all onesided,
and Freud, Jung, Anna, Bernays and the gang all kept finding
the anti-christ but didn't realize why and projected their own great fears
onto the Gentile world and caused the very genocide they fled.

There's a danger in almost every tool to be misused as a murder weapon. It depends much on who uses it. I find Jung to be more balanced than Freud & Co. - I wish that you wouldn't put Jung in to their category, for he had totally different motives as far as I know.

-v

I too favor Jung over the others. Greatly. I have studied, used, and taught Psychology for years. Group therapy, counseling, Marriage Counseling, sports medicine, just to name a few. I felt that no matter how far Jung moved away from their camp he still can be grouped in the same category with them. One sided analysis. Without the patients also analyzing the doctor we will never know what really transpired between them. Sure, Jung was more interested in what his patients actually said, but even he was not instructing his patients how to analyze him while he was doing the same to them.

The doctors are projecting their own light onto the patient and reading the absence of that reflected light as their patient's shadow. As the OP has the eloquent new idea that the Anti-christ is just a shadow of the Christ I felt the my paragraph above supports this case. A doctor who projects their own light onto a patient, and then reads any absence of reflection as darkness within that patient will quickly find themselves looking at their own worst fears. The one thing even Jung knew, was that fleeing fears only makes them stronger.

Psychoanalyzing ones' own doctor (psychologist specifically) makes the job of being a Psychologist possible. It's like a young person getting to play 1 on 1 with Michael Jordan. At no point is their 'game' really a threat, and Michael can tell you a whole lot about that person after just a few shots. The same is true when a doctor and patient analyze each other. Just by letting the patient be recognized as competent enough to fill out an analysis is empowering, and it puts them on the footing that they are here to improve their game, not because they are sick.

Modern psychology is like a lone person on the basketball court with a ball, facing a packed house. They walk around, and occasionally throw the ball at someone bouncing it off their head so it comes back into the doctors hands. He then reads the ball to the crowd. 'Sociopath!' The crowd claps. 'Repressed Memories!' crowd claps. 'Neurotic' Crowd claps.

This isn't a game, or even a sport. There is no real interaction or interplay. For now, if you want therapy you are better off finding a chess expert. All they require is that you tolerate insult. Far better than what a psychologist may prescribe for you.


David Grouchy