WHAT IS THE DEVIL
- ParrisVstefanow
- Mar 9
- 5 min read
Finally, after all of our deep-sea diving and subterranean mining, we have come to the bare root of the so-called reptilians.
Here it is important to understand that the gods that are ruling our world today are mostly demons that have boomeranged back on us as a result of the suppression of the unconscious mind.
You could look at it as the instincts of decadence and debauchery lording as master over the instincts of life. And just as the gods are all manifestations of one thing (unconscious) so too are the demons.
As to the latter, that one thing just so happens to be the devil.
Now, the 64 trillion dollar question:
What is this Poseidon-Pluto-Hades-Neptune-Shiva that is exactly the devil in Christian mythology?
Who is this dragon the Buddha slew under the Bodhi Tree and appears as the Adversary in the Book of Revelations?
What are we to make of this Great Magician of Aleister Crowley;
....... this negative side of the astral light as outlined by Eliphas Levi;
....... this lead that drives the alchemist mad and complicates the Work?
In a footnote buried like a needle in a haystack within Jung's Alchemical Studies we find one of the most accurate definitions of this Leviathan:
"The devil is the Saturnine form of the anima mundi."
What Dr. Jung is referring to here is the chaos, massa confusa, prima materia or undifferentiated primitive instinctual animalistic dark aspect of the unconscious mind.
This arcane substance (Mercurius), which is the basis of the Work, contains everything that is needed. It is fully autonomous being like the dragon that begets, reproduces, slays, and devours itself.
As Democritus is reputed to have said:
"Nature rejoices in nature, nature conquers nature, nature rules over nature."
It is important to note that the Stone issues or is born from the darkness of this prima materia (order out of chaos).
For does not Spring issue from Winter?
Is not enlightenment lighting up that which is dark?
And this is why the alchemists said such seemingly blasphemous things such as "God's love burns in hell".
Or why the adept Apuleius wrote the following in The Golden Ass:
"At midnight I saw the sun shining as if it were noon."
But this prima materia is just one aspect of Mercurius; the other being the Self.
For Mercurius stands at the beginning and end of the Great Work. As prima materia he is in his lowest form (dragon) and as the Lapis Philosophorum (rose, phoenix, lapis, stone, treasure hard to attain, etc.)
....... he reaches his height. It is his transformation that brings about the Alchemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz.
For as the Rosarium Philosophorum states:
"The opus proceeds from the one and leads back to the one."
Ultimately, the dragon, which it should be noted is synonymous with the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, is a dual force underlying all of life (just like the unconscious).
It is that androgynous paradoxical cosmic serpent that dogmatic religion cut in half. Within this context, a myriad of different variables are de-mystified.
For example,
why Kali (another variation of the Goddess) is characterized as the "water that kills and vivifies"
why the number 666 has a positive connotation in some cultures and a negative overtone in others why the dragon/serpent is at once vilified and revered why Lucifer (the morning star)
....... means both Christ and the devil
why the shamans the world over consider the life force tremendous of the world - that web of power that underlies the universe, to be a dualistic force that can be used for good
....... (attainment of the Ultimate) or evil (black magick/sorcery)
In the end, as long as we maintain this patently absurd posture of over emphasizing conscious life at the expense of the unconscious, Lilith
....... (another name for the prima material/screech owl) - that flaming sword in the Garden of Eden, that shamanistic anima that is both dangerous and has transformative power, will continue to block the way back (which is really forward).
Ultimately, the base instinctual aspects of the unconscious mind will have to be confronted/processed/integrated if we are to address this psychic split within man.
Integration as the Way Out
We are never going to integrate that which we demonize and vilify.
This fact highlights the crux of our current conundrum. It is what created the situation of opposed opposites in the first place. It is what led to this psychic split in man that is the source of our collective insanity. Casting these gods out has now made us feel like we need to cast them out.
For it was us who threw open the gates of the psychic underworld and unleashed the hordes of hellions; us who invited the Vampire in.
As Paracelsus wrote in De Ente Spirituali:
"A healthy mind is a castle that cannot be invaded without the will of its master; but if they (Larvae) are allowed to enter;
....... they excite the passions of men and women, they create cravings in them, they produce bad thoughts which act injuriously on the brain; they sharpen the animal intellect and suffocate the moral sense."
The key phrase in the above is,
"sharpen the animal intellect and suffocate the moral sense".
Does this sentiment not perfectly encapsulate our modern day sex (Venus) and death (Saturn) soaked cannibalistic pop-culture?
If so, why the emphasis on sex and death?
The reason is because sex and death act as the two main underlying correlates of temporality.
These two elements directly correspond with the two mainsprings of delusion that modern psychology recognizes as eros (desire) and thanatos (aggression).
It is these two chief motivations and underpinnings of life that attach us to our Matrix-like construct and keep the curtain of Maya from falling. In short, it is an effective way to clip our wings and keep us grounded.
While we may wish to run away from our fears we simply cannot. For life is the labyrinth; life is the Lodge. As such, we only meet ourselves along the way.
In a holographic universe where every part is the whole suppression, indifference, and an us vs. them mentality fractures, demarcates, delineates, and fragments the world.
This acts to distance us from our true Self by playing into the hands of an uproarious underworld that is currently in possession of the human race.
As Geoff Byrd puts it:
"The power vacuum was created by us. It is our own inability to face our own personal demons and heal our psychological trauma that allows this to happen."
In order to integrate the parts of ourselves that we've denied we must come to terms with and understand that which we repressed.
It is an established fact of psychotherapy that through understanding and experience of underlying contents we can free ourselves from compulsion.
In doing so, we facilitate the integration of the instincts which is a pre-requisite to completing the process of Individuation. Note that alchemy is a psychic projection of this process in symbolic form.
And that both alchemy and Jungian Individuation are identical to shamanic initiation.
In the end, our goal is to turn a dragon into a rose;
to square the circle;
to consciously collaborate with the unconscious process of Individuation and thereby bring about a transforming of the unconscious that results in the actualization of a unified Whole.
You could call this "Wholeness" Spirit although to be clear there is no pure spirit. For the Great Alchemical Work is a union of heaven and hell on earth.
Not abandoning the body, not annihilating the instincts, not denying life itself but rather transfiguring or spiritualizing the instincts and life itself. At any rate, Spirit is at once spiritual and corporeal.
As Nietzsche noted in The Antichrist:
"The 'pure spirit' is a pure stupidity."
In the final analysis, we can become zombified machine-like beasts enslaved under a scientific dictatorship totality devoid of any humanity or we can transform that diabolical character living in Saturn into a psychopomp that illuminates the way and allows us to become living philosophical stones.
The stakes are in the stratosphere.
So let us choose wisely.
