The Cunning Secret of the Wise

Frederick Burniston

Description

C.G. Jung described “the uncertain path that leads to the depths of the unconscious” as “unpopular, ambiguous, and dangerous, a voyage of discovery to the other pole of the world.” In order to navigate this boundless ocean Jung needed set of coordinates or a theoria. In alchemy the theoria or doctrine is as important as the practica, the work in the laboratory. Jung’s method of psycho-spiritual development, the individuation process is the practica and his model of the psyche is the theoria.
In Cunning Secret of the Wise the author looks at theoria that complement Jung’s doctrine (Nietzsche, Henry Corbin) and theoria that contradict it (Rene Guenon, Frithjof Schuon). He also writes about the origins of his own theoria and in the last three chapters he explores the vast theoria of Ibn ‘Arabi, the Greatest Shaykh (Shaykh al Akbar).

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Métaphysique
• Metaphysics
• Philosophy
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris UK
• Date de parution: 26 août 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781664115989
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE CUNNING SECRET OF THE WISE


A RESPONSE TO THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES










FREDERICK BURNISTON



Copyright © 2021 by Frederick Burniston.

Library of Congress Control Number:
2021912938
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6641-1600-9
Softcover
978-1-6641-1599-6
eBook
978-1-6641-1598-9

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Rev. date: 05/10/2023





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He is your mirror and you are His mirror in which He sees His Names and their determinations, which are none other than Himself.
(Ibn ‘Arabi)
In individual emotional development the precursor of the mirror is the mother’s face.
(D.W. Winnicott)
The Angel is the Face that our God takes for us, and each of us finds his God only when he recognizes that Face.
(Henry Corbin)



CONTENTS

Acknowledgements
Introduction
OPUS
1 How Deep Is The Ocean?: A Brief Introduction To Jung’s Theoria
2 Microcosmos: Mircea Eliade, Henry Corbin and C.G. Jung at Eranos
3 A Word Conceived In Intellect: Theoria and Practica in Sacred Art
4 Pneuma And Psyche: What Did Jung Do to offend the Gnostics?
5 The Guardians Of Sacred Order
6 C. G. Jung, Rene Guenon, And The Myth Of The Primordial Tradition
7 Synchronicity: A Dionysian Perspective
8 THE ACTIVE DOOR: Transfomation Symbolism In Nietzsche And Suhravardi
9 The Way Up And The Way Down Are One And The Same
PRIMA MATERIA
10 From Stanley Spencer’s Resurrection To John Coltrane’s Ascension
11 Persona Non Grata
THEORIA
12 On Archetypes And Divine Names
13 Opposition Is True Friendship: C.G.Jung, Ibn’arabi And The Answer To Job
14 Respecting Confusing Treads
APPENDICES
I. The Other Frithjof Schuon: A Case Of Reverse Individuation
II. An Overview Of Answer To Job
III. Freud’s Moses

Abbreviations
Bibliography



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has been a very long time in the making, and many of my formative influences have passed on in the meantime.
My first acknowledgement must go to Ninian Smart, the father of religious studies. Although I only studied under him for a year at the University of Lancaster, Ninian put me on the long road that led to this book. His amazing scholarship set the bar very high.
After Lancaster, I found my way by a circuitous route to the consulting room of Irene Champernowne who had undergone her analysis with C.G. Jung and Toni Wolff. She had an almost mediumistic intuition and might well have seen this book in potentia.
My second analyst was almost the antithesis of the first. Irene Champernowne was religiously Jungian; Giles Clark was iconoclastic by comparison. He led me up to the gates of the Underworld. Giles died in Australia in 2019, but the news of his death did not reach me until late 2020, when I had all but completed the last chapter of this book.
In 1984, I sent an essay I had written on Meister Eckhart to Kathleen Raine, a poet and Eranos scholar and the editor of an exciting new journal, Temenos. In her reply, Kathleen invited me to contribute a paper to the journal (now chapter 3 of this book). Her letter had the force of an enormous Yes that set the wheels in motion for Cunning Secret of the Wise .
It may seem strange that I should now pay tribute to a man who delivered a resounding No a few years later. He was a distinguished Islamic scholar and a practicing Sufi. But he regarded Jungian psychology as so much bogus spirituality. In the correspondence that followed our meeting in 1986, my adherence to Jung was put to a trial by fire. Martin Lings was unfailingly courteous even when dialogue became confrontation which it did very soon. (See: Ch.5: 3)
I have written this book without the benefit of a scholarly community. But “in the midst of the greatest obstructions, friends come.” (Wilhelm I Ching, 39 th hexagram, 9 at 5 th ) The friends who came were Andrew Rawlinson, whose support has been as rock solid as his criticism has been trenchant, and Gregory Lipton, whose book Rethinking Ibn ‘Arabi resolved many of my impossible conflicting narratives about Frithjof Schuon. Friends also came from the Muslim community. My conversations with Samir Mahmoud, Abbas Zahedi, Rabia Malik and Sachi Arafat have contributed as much, if not more to this book than their distinguished predecessors.
Ann McCoy’s painting Hermaphroditus is the very image of the cunning secret of the wise. My heartfelt thanks to her for permission to use her drawing and to Richard Webster who designed the cover.
My wife Nada Kuzmanov has accompanied me through every twist and turn of this forty- year opus alchemicum and kept her nerve. She’s true like ice, like fire.



INTRODUCTION

This stone is that thing that is found more in thee (than in any other way) created by God, and thou art its prima materia and out of thee will it be drawn, and wherever thou mayest be, so will it remain with thee. (Morienus cited in CW 9/2: 258)
In Liber Novus or The Red Book , Jung spoke of the conflict between the spirit of the times and the spirit of the depths. The first spirit is concerned exclusively with this quotidian world, and Jung confesses that he too thought in this way. But now he is impelled to give voice to the spirit of the depths “that from time immemorial and for all the future possesses a greater power than the spirit of this time.” This spirit has taken away Jung’s belief in science and placed him “at the service of the inexplicable and the paradoxical”. (Jung 2009:119) Those who defy the spirit of the times and serve the spirit of the depths have submitted to a prophetic vocation.
Jung’s descent into the Underworld on the eve of the First World War was a dangerous venture. He risked ending up like his predecessor Nietzsche who had fallen into an irreversible psychosis. But how did he avoid this pitfall? How did he keep his balance on the tightrope? The alchemists, who had trodden this path long before him insisted on the necessity for a theoria or doctrine to provide a set of coordinates. Jung defined the alchemical theoria as “the quintessence of the symbolism of unconscious processes”:
It is the one solid possession from which the adept can proceed. He must find “the magnet of the wise” which will enable the adept to draw up the sparks of light (scintillae) embedded in the prima materia. For the prima materia always remains to be found, and the only thing that helps him is “the cunning secret of the wise,” a theory that can be communicated. (CW. 9/2:219)
Without the doctrine it is impossible for the alchemist to proceed with the work in the laboratory, the practica. Jung formulated his own powerful theoria to bring order to the chaos that threatened to overwhelm him. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections he described the fantasies that burst out from the unconscious psyche as “the prima materia for a lifetime’s work”. (MDR:225)
Morienus, who provides the motto for this introduction, was a Christian hermit and alchemist of the seventh century and he lived in the mountains near Jerusalem. His theoria, anticipates Jung by more than a millennium: the prima materia is within you or more accurately you are the lapis in potentia. But it is easy to fall into illusions of continuity. Morienus lived in the Christian myth but Jung was compelled to admit to himself that he no longer lived in this myth or indeed any other. Then he asked himself “… what is your myth, the myth by which you do live?” (MDR:195) The question would have been incomprehensible to Morienus.
The theologian Langdon Gilkey aptly characterized the spirit of the times as “the secular mood.” He unpacked this term in his book Naming the Whirlwind :
The modern spirit is thus radically this—worldly. We tend not to see our life and its meanings as stretching out towards an eternal order beyond our existence, or our fortunes as dependent on a transcendent ruler of time and history. We view our life as here, and our destiny as beginning with birth and ending with the grave, as confined in space and time to this world in nature and among men.
Nothing could be more contrary to the Christian doctrine of fallen man’s total dependence on divine grace than the secular mood. In marked contrast to our forefathers, we pride ourselves on our self-reliance. Whatever meaning we can find in our short life depends entirely on our powers of intellect and will, “not on the grace and mercy of an ultimate heavenly sovereign.” (Gilkey 1969:39)
In two prophetic books, The Crisis of the Modern World and The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times , the Sufi metaphysician Rene Guenon (aka. Shaykh’ Abd Al-Wahid Yahya) challenged the fundamental premises of the secular mood with compelling logic. (Guenon 1942/1962 and 1945/1972) He argued persuasively that only a civiliza