Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team
Carl Jung spent a lot of time contemplating on evil. He said humanity would face evil like never before, as we have just enterred the Age of Aquarius. This shift in Platonic month or astrological epoch only happens once every 2000 years. And this particular shift, the shift from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius, happens through a shocking confrontation of humanity with evil.
According to Jung, a change of Platonic month happens in between two Great Conjunctions. A Great Conjunction is when Jupiter and Saturn will align to great precision from the perspective of Earth. This happens roughly every twenty years, and the last time it happened was on Monday 21 December 2020, exactly on the Winter Solstice. It was during this Conjunction, Jung said, that the shift from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius would start.
A Great Conjunction happens every 20 years and so doesn’t seem that special from an astronomical perspective, but it is made more significant astrologically by the sign the conjunction happens in and the closeness of the conjunction. The 2020 conjunction happened in the sign of Aquarius, on Winter Solstice, and was extremely precise.
This is one of the reasons why Jung predicted that 21 December 2020 would be the moment we shift to an entirely new astrological epoch: the Age of Aquarius. Many astrologers agree that this was the start of a new Platonic month (which happens once every 2000 years), or even the start of a completely new cycle in The Great Year (which happens once every 24,000 years), as defined by the precession of the equinoxes (Earth’s “wobble” around its axis).
So what to think about astrology as a modern person with a scientific mind? Carl Jung was by far the most advanced thinker I know when it comes to the question of how science and spirituality can be combined. His concept of synchronicity opens the door to interpret the relative movements in the stars and planets as parallel to relative movements in our collective psyche, without having to assume a causal mechanism.
Jung’s book Aion. Researches into the Phenomenology of the self (1951) is for a large part about trying to comprehend the history of the psyche over the last 2000 years using astrology as a tool to point out key psychic and physical changes within this period. One of the key astrological features he analyses is the Great Conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn.
One of Jung’s basic ideas is that the fish symbolism that gathered around the figure of Christ was synchronistically parallel to the new astrological age of the fishes (Pisces) which was then dawning. We know from a wealth of data that the early Christians explicitly identified Christ with the fish. The sign of the fish was used as a secret talisman to identify one Christian to another. Christ became a kind of personification of his aeon.
Indeed, there was a similarly close Great Conjunction in 7BC – around Christ’s birth – that happened in the Sign of Pisces (fishes). There are speculations that the famous “star of Bethlehem” as witnessed by the three Kings (or better: Magi) was in fact the momentary fusion of Saturn and Jupiter.
So what is the significance of the coming Great Conjunction, and the turn into the new astrological epoch, according to Jung? It will all be about a shift from the polarization between opposites, to the union of opposites.
The “opposites” may concern every duality such as the one between good and evil, but opposition in the case of Jung often also applies to the gender opposition between the masculine and the feminine (see AGTRT-BA24). It is about duality itself: the contrast between light and darkness.
The union of this opposition can only be experienced within ourselves, so it requires shadow work and deep introspection. Or in the words of Carl Jung himself (Aion, p.86/87):
“The present age must come to terms drastically with the facts as they are, with the absolute opposition that is not only tearing the world asunder politically but has planted a schism in the human heart. We need to find our way back to the original, living spirit which, because of its ambivalence, is also a mediator and uniter of opposites, an idea that preoccupied the alchemists for many centuries.
If, as seems probable, the aeon of the fishes is ruled by the archetypal motif of the hostile brothers, then the approach of the next Platonic month, namely Aquarius, will constellate the problem of the union of opposites. It will then no longer be possible to write off evil as the mere privation of good; its real existence will have to be recognized.
This problem can be solved neither by philosophy, nor by economics, nor by politics, but only by the individual human being, via his experience of the living spirit, whose fire descended upon Joachim, one of many, and, despite all contemporary misunderstandings, was handed onward into the future.“
Jung reminds us about something very shocking about evil: evil is extremely real. You could say Jung saw evil as just as real as — or maybe even more real than — humanity. In the sense that he described evil as an autonomous force, older than the world itself.
Evil is almost a form of consciousness, or you can call it an anti-consciousness. Consciousness inverted. A lack of consciousness. However you call it: it is real, it is autonomous, it acts intentional like a person, and it possesses us all.
This mere fact — the realness of evil, its omnipresence, its capacity to act autonomously and intentionally — is so shocking to us, Jung describes, that we push it away. Into the unconscious. There, evil is luring in the darkness. The fact that we deny evil, is what creates the Shadow in which evil hides and resides. Evil loves the Shadow. From there, it possesses us, it houses in us, it uses us.
Jung was a psychologist who focused on the individual psyche. From a social science perspective, I would like to add that evil needs more than the unconscious Shadow of the individual psyche. Evil cannot survive in the persona of an individual. It needs a giver and a receiver. It needs hierarchy. It needs inequality. For evil to express itself, it needs a relation. Evil hides in the individual Shadow, but expresses itself through social relations (see AGTRT-BA7 and AGTRT-BA26).
The only way to defeat evil, is to recognize it. To slowly learn to see evil as it acts in our relationships. To become aware of evil in our confrontation with the Other. The receiver of evil is best positioned to break the spell. They can recognize evil through their anger at the giver of evil.
This anger is initially repressed, as evil is too shocking to confront. The receiver must learn to be courageous enough to recognize evil and express their anger about it. It is the only way to stop evil from flowing in the relation. They must put in evil to a halt by expressing their anger and drawing a boundary.
So, for evil to disappear, we have to chase it out of the Shadow and bring it into consciousness. We have to look the beast in the beak. This can only be achieved through very hard work on both the emotional and the social level. It requires immense courage and strong morals. It requires an unconditional faith in our own emotions. That is what is required for shadow work (see AGTRT-BA7 and AGTRT-BA26).
Pain can never be avoided in this process. There will be interpersonal damage. The givers of evil will not like the confrontation by the receivers of evil. There will be fights, break-ups, conflicts. The giver of evil will accuse, attack, gaslight the receiver of evil when the latter chooses to confront. But the confrontation needs to be done for suffering to stop.
In religious circles, it is common practice to say that we are not actually fighting our fellow humans but instead a force much older than humanity: evil itself. In a way, that is true: we are fighting an autonomous force as old as the universe itself. A force that is abusing our wounds. A force hiding in our unconscious. At the same time, humans are ultimately to be held responsible for the evil they commit, as evil only takes advantage of those unwilling to confront it.
No human is born evil; evil is using humans who avoid the Shadow and let themselves to be corrupted.
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