The Dialectics of Repression.

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
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I think the word “genius” in that discussion only refers to this passage:

[size=95]The relative abolition of the ego affects only those supreme and ultimate decisions which confront us in situations where there are insoluble conflicts of duty. This means, in other words, that in such cases the ego is a suffering bystander who decides nothing but must submit to a decision and surrender unconditionally. The “genius” of man, the higher and more spacious part of him whose extent no one knows, has the final word.
[Jung, Aion, “Christ, a Symbol of the Self”.][/size]

I think we should think here, partly because of the quotation marks, of the original Latin meaning of “genius”:

[size=95]guardian deity or spirit which watches over each person from birth
[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=genius.][/size]

This should remind you of the ‘Holy Guardian Angel’ from the Western Hermetic tradition:

[size=95]We have already seen that each of us is the final Heh [of Yod Heh Vau Heh], the Princess living in Assiah far from our original estate. But who is this Vau, the Prince to whom we must surrender [compare the Jung quote above!] and who will be our Secret Lover and Champion? Where do we seek the Prince? In the Western Hermetic Tradition he is called THE HOLY GUARDIAN ANGEL and “he” is closer to us than our own heart-beat. He is our Secret Lover.
[The Pathworkings of Aleister Crowley, Appendix.][/size]

According to Jung, however, not “each of us” is the Princess: each woman is the Princess, whereas each man is the Prince. Which is to say that each man, though still the final Heh, is the Prince living in Assiah far from his original estate, who must in “insoluble conflicts of duty” surrender to his Vau which is the Princess. Jung has called these male and female Vaus the ‘Animus’ and the ‘Anima’, respectively: they are the person’s personified unconscious, which in the female has a male character, and in the male, a female one. The unconscious, therefore, the greatest part of the Self: that is what I think the word “genius” means in Jung’s mouth.

I don’t think Freud saw a synthetic mechanism. As I’ve already said, the ‘dialectics’ of repression are no actual dialectic: repression’s no synthesis of the RP and the PP, but simply the RP’s repressing the PP. And neurosis/sublimation’s no synthesis of repression and the PP, but the PP’s substitute gratifications in ways left open by repression (e.g., in dreams, in socially acceptable channels like art, etc.).

I have, by the way, lost my anxiousness regarding repression, for the moment, at least. This is thanks to the philosophy of science of Ernst Mach (from the sound barriers).

Though I have just begun to study him, I think he teaches that all experiences are sensations, and therefore that all pleasure is sensual pleasure (or that all experiences are impressions, and that all pleasure is therefore spiritual pleasure). Freud basically says that (self-)repression follows from object-loss (“loss of the friendly expanses”, to speak with Jim Morrison), but in Mach’s view there are no objects at all: there are only sensations and complexes of sensations, and the simplification of such complexes to ‘objects’ is a falsification on the part of the spirit/mind/intellect (Geist). Without objects, then, there can be no object-loss, but only the loss of pleasant sensations. But as for the child, all sensations are pleasant insofar as they’re not painful… My world, then, is full of pleasant sensations, and it does not matter if I derive these from ‘sublimations’ or not: for essentially, all pleasure is sensual pleasure, as I’ve already said.—

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I’ve read some things about Mach - this period certainly spawned a lot of interesting views. I can see that this one is very compatible with Nietzsche’s subjectivism. You may remember what I wrote in the rank-change-thread about physics being a modeling of the mind. I can relate to what I get from Mach so far to this extent, although I doubt that universal models actually conflict with the idea that all is sensation. I believe in subjectivism, but not in the kind of absolute subjectivism that reduces all external models to superstitions.

On the anima - I actually think that the genius residing in Tipharet consists of several archetypes, not just the prince and princess. In fact this personification is, I think, a result of interpretation and can be stretched into an entire spectrum of different personas, ranging from child to a lesser godhead. It is understandable that the male internalized libido or self-love naturally projects an anima, a female-guardian spirit, and that this is the center of the spectrum.

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Note that I never mentioned Tiphareth.

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You did implicitly, by referring to the holy guardian angel and it’s location, Vau.

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Well, I don’t know if Vau necessarily corresponds to Tiphareth, though it’s centered in Tiphareth, it corresponds to Yetzirah. Anyway, yes, you do have a point, the HGA is found in Tiphareth. So here we have again the problem of the difference between the Anima and the child archetype which I thought I had solved:

http://sauwelios.blogspot.com/2009/09/child-archetype-august-01-2007.html

The ‘child’, like all the symbols of the Self, belongs in Tiphareth.

At this point I almost got caught in these spiderwebs again. But if you read back, as I just did, you will see that my point, argued by flawless logic, was simply that the “genius” Jung refers to is simply the unconscious.

Some more flawless logic: the fact that the Knowledge and Conversation of the HGA is obtained in Tiphareth does not mean that the HGA belongs in Tiphareth.—In fact, I associate the HGA/Anima with Netzach (in Yetzirah) and Hokmah (among the Supernals). The HGA is not the child archetype/a symbol of the Self etc. This becomes clear when we compare the Western Hermetic formula (1) with the Jungian/numerological formulae (2):

  1. Final_Heh + Vau => Heh + Yod

  2. Ego + symbol-of-the-Self => Integration

We can best see both the difference and the connection between them if we introduce a fifth element into the Western Hermetic formula:

Final_Heh (the Ego) + middle_Shin (symbol of the Self) => {Final_Heh + Vau (the Anima or Animus)} = Shin (the Self)

In other words: meditation on the symbolised Self can integrate Vau into the Final Heh, i.e., make the personality center shift from the Ego to the Self. Hence in crossing the Abyss, one “either i[/i] becomes a Brother of the Left Hand Path or, i[/i] is stripped of all his attainments and of himself as well, even of his Holy Guardian Angel, and becomes a Babe of the Abyss, who, having transcended the Reason, does nothing but grow in the womb of its mother.” (Crowley, One Star in Sight.)

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This may be unclear. Note that there is a difference between “=>” and “=”.

Final_Heh + middle_Shin

=>

{Final_Heh + Vau} = Shin

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Thus the anima or animus is indeed intimately related to the child archetype. But confusing them is detrimental: for by meditating on the anima or animus, the distinction between that and one’s conscious self becomes ever starker, whereas meditation on the child archetype has the effect of a harmonization of the two.

This is very useful.
I am especially interested in the stark distinction - the contrast.
This is powerfully attractive. The will to power as the will to distinction.

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Thus the anima or animus is indeed intimately related to the child archetype. But confusing them is detrimental: for by meditating on the anima or animus, the distinction between that and one’s conscious self becomes ever starker, whereas meditation on the child archetype has the effect of a harmonization of the two.

This is very useful.
I am especially interested in the stark distinction - the contrast.
This is powerfully attractive. The will to power as the will to distinction.

Please elaborate on Shin. What is this pentagrammatica you are dealing with?

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So again you seem more interested in prolonging and making more acute inner conflict than solving it. Anyway, I think it’s clear how it works: by focusing one’s consciousness (Ego, which has a male or a female character) on one’s personified unconscious (which has a female (Anima) or a male (Animus) character, respectively), one stands the former in diametrical opposition to the latter.

I used Shin here to symbolise the synthesis between Yod and Heh (and the middle_Shin to symbolise the synthesis between Vau and the final_Heh). I took this formula—(Shin) Yod Heh (Shin) Vau Heh (Shin)—from the Liber Pentagrammaton.

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I am interested in outlining them before integrating. Like you said, they should not be confused. Strak contrast is not bad - it does not inhibit integration.

This is pretty chaotic writing. It does not help much in clarifying.

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Ok, yes, that makes sense.

I just posted that link to show where I got the formula.

My ‘pentagrammatica’ does not seem to have a ‘final Shin’—which by the way I find the most nonsensical form of the formula (YHVHS, Jehovas, Gods? The Shin identified with the English plural ‘s’? I think not).

If the final Heh (the Ego) focuses on the Vau (the Animus/Anima), the contrast between the former (the conscious self) and the latter (the unconscious self) becomes starker.

If instead it focuses on the middle Shin (a figure recognised as a symbol of the—integrated—Self), the Vau naturally moves to the side of the final Heh, because the symbol of the Self is like a mirror image of the Vau and the final Heh combined (integrated).

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I would then rather see that image as Briah, the second Heh, which is akin to Binah, which is analogous to Malkuth. The integrated image would then not be below Tipharet, but Yetzirah ascended by integration of Malkuth into the heart of the tree - or actually the throat, Daath.

Now that I write that Daath seems also like a suitable place for this image of integration. It is transient knowledge i.e. entirely subjective, a state. Since Briah is the Archetypical sphere - from which images would be drawn.

If it does happen between Tipharet and Malkuth, I would think it is in Yesod. That also makes sense in a way, but not if the image is the child. Daath, in my experience, is the laughing child.

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I’d forgotten that the Four Worlds traditionally correspond to the four letters of Tetragrammaton. I thought Yod and Heh would surely correspond to Hokmah and Binah. But then again, according to Crowley (though not to others), Atziluth and Briah only contain Hokmah and Binah, respectively. So far so good, then. And Assiah contains only Malkuth. So we can say the final Heh corresponds with Malkuth. And Yetzirah contains all the Sephiroth I have not yet named in this post. This would agree with what I said about the HGA, that though the attainment of its Knowledge and Conversation happens in Tiphareth, it is not itself limited to that sphere. We can now turn the Tree around and say that Malkuth is the Ego, i.e., that part of the Self which naturally rises above the surface of consciousness. All of the ‘lower man’ (not Adam Kadmon, but the other one, I forgot what he’s called), all the six other Sephiroth, are then part of the Anima/Animus, i.e., the unconscious. But I’m pretty sure the symbols of the Self belong in Tiphareth only.

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On a more tentative note: according to this site, which has been of help to me in the past, the Spiritual Experience (attainment) in Malkuth is the Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel (as distinct from the Knowledge and Conversation). If the Ego in Malkuth looks up, it sees Yesod. I think seeing Yesod may be what that attainment refers to. It may be the insight that there is an unconscious at all. But Yesod—the unconscious, or even the Anima/Animus (i.e., the personification of the unconscious) eclipses the sun of Tiphareth—the symbol of the Self.

If the symbol of the Self belongs in Tiphareth, the surrounding Sephiroth may symbolise fractions of the Self, which may be unconscious (and therefore necessary Animus/Anima figures): Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercurius. And that site lists among the gods pertaining to Geburah (the sphere of Mars) Sekhmet. Sekhmet, the bloodthirsty lion-headed Egyptian goddess, becomes Hathor (Venus, listed among the gods pertaining to Netzach, the sphere of Venus), who gives birth to Horus, whom as a child-god I associate with Tiphareth, not Geburah. Geburah and Netzach are then the Virgin (I associate Sekhmet with Pallas Athena) and the Mother, respectively. And Hesed and Hod are then the Father or Adult Male and the Boy, respectively.

Now I used to think that the ‘Boy’ represented the Dionysian aspect of the male, whereas the ‘Mother’ symbolised that of the female. But Zeus/Jupiter is of course the god famous for his adultery in particular and sexual appetite in general.

Aphrodite and Hermes/Mercurius had a son called Hermaphrodites, of course. Hermaphrodites, however, contrary to what his name may suggest, was not born a hermaphrodite. Rather, he was an adonis—and indeed, I personally associate Adonis with Yesod, not Tiphareth (though he is of course a ‘dying god’).

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Tiphareth is also known as the Christ-center. The Christ is the child of God the Father and a Virgin.

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Repression is for the… repressed 8-[

Is one truly living if one is living a repressed life? :-k No!

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Repression is like premature ejaculation without the ejaculation.

I think I’m barely making sense here, but I am quite tired.

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I think that they are forged in Binah. They cannot be perceived anywhere else than via Tipharet, because that is the individuality. But not for nothing Tipharet connects with everything, also to Malkuth, via Binah.

As you probably know I have a different way of interpreting and using the sephirot, I use them as forces, emanations, which incorporate by operating within a structure, and the Gods that pertain to them are side products of the growing awareness of these forces.

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How is Malkuth connected to Binah? Only if we understand Kether as Malkuth on a higher plane, surely.

And what does Binah signify in this context—the unconscious?

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It says so in the ancient texts. As the first and the last form aspect.

In the way I use the instrument, Freudian terminology doesn’t correlate with the tree of life as a whole.
The unconscious is a broad term, it applies to malkuth, yesod, netzach, kether, geburah, and binah assuredly.
The others in many cases as well.