Description
Book SynopsisThis book traces the ancient Greek God Pan, who became distorted into the image of the Devil in early Christianity. When Pan was demonized, the powerful qualities he represented became repressed, as Pan’s visage twisted into the model of the Devil. The book follows a Jungian analysis of this development. In ancient Greek religion, Pan was worshipped as an honored deity, corresponding to an inner psycho-spiritual condition in which the primitive qualities he represented were fully integrated into consciousness, and these qualities valued and affirmed as holy. But in the era of early Christianity Pan “dies,” and the Devil is born, a twisted inflation, possibly due to an underlying repression. In the Jungian system, repressed psychic contents do not disappear, as proponents of the new order tacitly assume, but distort and grow more powerful, or “inflate,” to cripple the psyche that refuses to incorporate these split-off elements. Repressed contents will expand to explosive force as the repressed elements eventually return regressively from below. It becomes important then, to understand what qualities the primitive Goat God carried, to appreciate what was repressed in the Western psycho-spiritual system, and what subsequently needs reintegration.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
List of Captions
Introduction
Chapter 1 Jungian Theory: The Archetype of the “Shadow”
Chapter 2 Unio Mystica: Pan the Ancient Goat God
Chapter 3 Coincidentia Oppositorum: The Renunciate Trajectory the Smooth and the Rough
Chapter 4 Complexio Oppositorum: The Dystopian Trajectory
Chapter 5 Born From a Divided Cosmos, Christians Renounce the World
Chapter 6 Return of the Repressed
Chapter 7 Coniunctio Oppositorum: Sympathy for the Devil
Bibliography
Appendix 1: Further Reading
About the Author
