Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 13, No. 1, 1974

The Mythology of Evil M O R T O N T. K E L S E Y In this w o r l d , which is b o t h kind and cruel to m a n , we h u m a n beings find ourselves s u p p o r t e d by a c o m p l e x physical, social, and p s y c h o l o g i c a l e n v i r o n m e n t in a w a y we are o n l y beginning t o k n o w . It is o n l y in t h e past centuries, as m a n has c o m e t o s t u d y these i n t r i c a t e and i n t e r r e l a t e d e l e m e n t s o f his e n v i r o n m e n t , that he c o u l d really k n o w t h e c o m p l e x i t y a n d p u r p o s e f u l n e s s in it t h a t m a k e possible t h e strange p r o d u c t k n o w n as conscious psychic life. In reacting t o this t o t a l e n v i r o n m e n t , m a n has called good those aspects t h a t help him sustain his life and e n j o y it fully and creatively. B u t t h e r e are also e l e m e n t s o f this w o r l d a r o u n d a n d w i t h i n m a n t h a t a p p e a r t o be a n y t h i n g b u t h e l p f u l or creative. T h e s e d e s t r u c t i v e and disruptive aspects, which m a n calls evil, b r e a k in u p o n him in m a n y ways. T h e r e are natural c a t a s t r o p h e s t h a t engulf u s - - e a r t h q u a k e , fire, f l o o d , plague, famine. T h e r e are such social evils as war, m u r d e r , o p p r e s s i o n b y t y r a n t s ; t h e r e are p o v e r t y , social c o n d e m n a t i o n , and b e t r a y a l . A n d t h e n t h e r e are the m o r e personal and i n t i m a t e evils t h a t m a y or m a y n o t be associated w i t h these others. H e r e we find physical and m e n t a l illness, and t h o s e m o r e internal ills t h a t have h a d t o wait f o r t h e i r full b l o o m in o u r time, w i t h o u r increased self-consciousness. With m a n ' s ability t o c o n t r o l so m a n y of t h e obvious, o u t e r plagues, he has n o t f o u n d h i m s e l f free, at peace; instead he has a w a k e n e d t o a h o s t o f n e w and intangible evils: t o loneliness and loss o f meaning, t o a n x i e t y and depression, t o guilt, h o s t i l i t y , a n d c o m p u l s i o n and neurosis. As m a n has c o m e to distinguish t h e good and evil in his e n v i r o n m e n t , he has inevitably l o o k e d for ways to c o n t r o l t h e aspects o f reality t h a t t h r e a t e n him. This search, in which the w o r k o f t h e p s y c h i a t r i s t is o n l y t h e m o s t r e c e n t e n d e a v o r , leads t o the m o s t basic q u e s t i o n o f o u r discussion: What is the nature o f evil and from whence does it come? We find t h a t t h e r e are t h r e e essentially d i f f e r e n t ways o f a p p r o a c h i n g this q u e s t i o n . In the first w a y , we see n o c o n n e c t i o n b e t w e e n the m i s f o r t u n e s t h a t h a p p e n to us, n o m a l i g n a n t p u r p o s e or central cause. B o t h g o o d and evil are

The Rev. Morton T. Kelsey is Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame. He is Rector Emeritus of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Monrovia, California, and a licensed marriage, family, and child counselor in California. He is a member of the Institutes of Religion and Health.

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simply the product of change, and since there is no ultimate meaning to the world, good or bad, we change what we can by our own ego power and let the rest go. This view, though formerly that of only the few skeptics, has become so much the standpoint of our culture that it forms the basic ground for most of our popular thinking t o d a y . The second approach, coming from a period more optimistic about the world and human nature, is based on ideas we no longer understand very well. It finds principles of right and wrong existing as a "science" of morality, as certain as mathematics, but applying only to man and his behavior. With the universe itself grinding on in its inexorable, neutral way, good and evil are to be discovered by our own reason; they are rational ideas t h a t exist, although without much relation to the metaphysical nature and structure of reality. It is this point of view, held by Aristotle in antiquity, by Kant, Spinoza, and John Stuart Mill in modern times, that finally left modern man disillusioned. It did n o t give him the leverage he had hoped for on the evil that seems to sweep over him more and more. Then there is the third point of view, which, although it is not much considered today, was once that of all the major religions of the world. This is the understanding that ultimate reality consists of a creative power responsible for the development of human life and also of a power underlying and responsible for the manifestations of evil in the world. Neither good nor evil happens by chance; both are created by realities, nonphysical powers or principles with which man is in contact. We find, then, two different ideas on how man relates to these opposing powers. According to the first, he has very little to do with them; evil is the necessary corollary of good, and to live above its destructive effect man must accept it as a necessary part of the cosmos. This is the attitude of Taoism and Zen, which lead more toward resignation and inner development than to activism. It is as evil has been seen from another, still dualistic, view that a serious a t t e m p t has been made to destroy its evidences outwardly. In the other view of the reality of evil, man does n o t see it as a necessary part of the ultimate nature of things, but as one t h a t can be confronted and defeated. It finds man standing in direct contact with both the powers for good and for evil. Because he is able to deal face to face with both realities, he can call upon forces greater than himself in confronting the outer manifestations of evil. Thus he participates in directing his own fate. Many of the great religions have held this view; it was basic to the Greek and Persian religions, to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It also underlies our modern scientific beliefs, as well as the religion of Marxism. It has been the object of much philosophical thought, from Plato through all the great Christian thinkers from Justin Martyr to Augustine and Aquinas. In our time this belief, this understanding of reality to which m y t h relates, has had its main support from Carl G. Jung, out of his fifty years of psychiatric experience and study.

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Inner reality and the meaning of m y t h This view rests upon one basic premise that, though simple enough to state, must be investigated and experienced to be discussed fruitfully. Briefly, it finds man in contact not only with the immediate, physical world, b u t also with an inner, nonphysical world, a realm of being that men have called psychic or spiritual. Man relates to this second, inner reality by experience; in spite of recent Christianity, he cannot discover it just by thinking. When we consider that all experience is psychic experience by the time it gets above the brainstem, it seems odd t h a t most people find this inner world so much less real than the outer, material one. As men do turn toward the experiencing center, t h e y find, not a tabula rasa, a void, but a reality t h a t has b o t h creative and destructive aspects, as any modern neurotic will testify. Man can actually experience a power that develops and enlivens, and also a power, a nonphysical reality that speaks of darkness, of anxiety and evil within man. This reality in man, it is believed, is more or less responsible for the other, outer manifestations of destructiveness and meaninglessness that afflict men and are expressed through them. It was called spiritual reality in former times; t o d a y ' s depth psychologists speak of the same reality as the "unconscious." One man who has described experiences of these inner realities in our own time is Jung, who wrestled with the problem of evil as few others do today. Jung was able to do so because he could draw on a sophisticated philosophical point of view and a vast experience of the actual workings of the disturbed human psyche as well as on his own inner struggle and his extensive study of mythology. Besides his writings for the medical profession, the course of his discovery is charted in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, with a candid honesty and p r o f o u n d self-knowledge that are rare in our time. As Jung saw, m y t h o l o g y is the language that men use to describe their encounters with the inner psychic world. The symbols of m y t h s give tools to distinguish and deal with nonphysical reality, very much as the symbols and formulas of chemistry help us to work with physical elements. They are both forms of communication, but t o d a y men who have grown up in Western culture devalue mythology because they have lost touch with its language; they have forgotten how to think symbolically. This kind o f thinking through images and stories comes from a center of purpose within the individual that is different from the logic of either the ego or the physical world. This m e t h o d , which proves useful in dealing with the peculiarly human world of psychic realities, is the communication of art and literature, of m y t h and the dream, which in reality is the individual nightly m y t h of each of us. But in the important process of applying logic and reason to the physical world, Western peoples have come to look u p o n m y t h as a poor a t t e m p t to be something it is not. We feel these stories ought

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to have some rational purpose, to teach or explain, or perhaps even to deceive. Our thinking has b e c o m e b o x e d like a c o m p u t e r within its own circuits until it is hard for us to conceive of any view different from our own rational materialism. Yet if we listen to the ancients, or to Shakespeare, G oet he, or even a m o d e r n like Edward Albee in his "Virginia Woolf," it is clear that m y t h does refer to something else. Seen as a c o m m u n i c a t i o n t hat does not come from the rational and material world, it speaks of things quite different but equally real. Its images and stories convey descriptions of psychic or nonphysical reality t hat neither sense experience nor rational concepts can convey, and t h e y have a spontaneous quality t hat strikes deep in the psyche and is open to this reality. This view is foreign t o the m o d e r n Christian theology of Bultmann and B o n h o ef f er , or the Honest-to-God bishop John Robinson. Myt h is absurd to th e demythologizer, because he does n o t believe t hat there is any reality b e y o n d the sensible world, and so he makes a distinction between m y t h and history th at is neither logical nor plausible. Myt h is very different f r o m allegory, which consciously portrays an existing situation, as in Gulliver's Travels or parts of A l i c e in W o n d e r l a n d ; or from daydreaming, which gives imaginative play t o what man already thinks he desires. Instead, m y t h deals with realities that have the power to become, to create history, because t h e y rise and wo r k in the depths of man's psyche. Rather than eliminating the language of these psychic realities, it would seem a very practical m a t t e r t o d a y to listen to them. Looking at history, we find it hard t o avoid the mythological elements, for instance, in the d e v e l o p m e n t of Naziism in our own time. These realities, heard in a different way, were also present in the deat h of President K ennedy, and even m ore in the way Abraham Lincoln m e t assassination on Good Friday, 1864. These are th e same realities seen most fully in our own religious heritage, in the mythological pattern and the historical events that marked the beginning of our age. But t o d a y the interest in m y t h and the m y t h o l o g y of evil does n o t stem f r o m philosophical or religious thinkers, but from a strange quarter and for a strange reason. This recent interest comes f r om the medical profession out of the a t t e m p t to understand mental illness. As physicians have struggled with the very p r o b lem we are discussing, the problem o f evil, t hey have f o u n d no alternative b ut to deal with realities t hat are almost impossible to express th r o u g h rational means. T o help people c o n f r o n t the increasing problem of psychic disorder, the things t h a t are expressed mythologically in dream.s and in art and literature have had to be studied rationally and scientifically. Th r o u g h m y t h , these men have begun to learn what is going on in the hum an unconscious and how great our need is to deal with these realities. Let us look, th en at h o w the m yt hs have dealt with this probl em of evil.

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T h e p e r s p e c t i v e s on evil

As long as there have been m yt hs there has been a m y t h o l o g y o f evil; indeed, the one ever-present m o t i f is the story of the hero and how evil m ay be overcome. One does n o t have to l o o k b e y o n d H o m e r to see that these stories are n o t all sweetness and light, t ha t neither gods nor men are b o u n d by exactly h u man ideas of morality or fair play. E veryw here t h e y show t he same experience of a malignant and destructive reality, and of creative and helpful elements w i t h o u t which there is n o t m u c h st ory to tell. In w hat way, then, do the m y t h s suggest t hat these t w o realities are related to each ot her? Historically, the first answer was t hat of the polyvalent or ambivalent gods, like the Hindu Shiva who was b o t h the giver of life and the destroyer. Among the Greeks, while Dionysius was the one in particular who brought b o t h inspiration and madness, m os t of the gods were quite changeable in their affections. T h e y were good to some and evil to others, and the task of religious ritual was to offer t h e m propitiation. The Asian peoples also had their m a n y m o t h e r goddesses who were givers of b o t h life and destruction. While there is some differentiation in the later versions of the Gilgamesh story, th e problem of good and evil does n o t b e c o m e acute as long as there are m a n y gods, since it is n o t necessary t o relate these poles t o o closely. It is in the Old T es t a m ent t h a t t he problem becomes crucial, for here m an is striving t o w a r d a conception of an all-powerful deity, and so the evil is attributed to God himself. There are n o t only stories of his actions t h a t can perhaps be justified, like the destruction of S o d o m and G o m o r r a h or his p u n i s h m e n t o f the Israelites in the wilderness, but we find purely destructive elements as well. The Old T e s t a m e n t is a record of experience, n o t ideas, and so it contains m a n y discordant notes: Abraham was willing to sacrifice his own child; Jacob was crippled for life by the angel; Moses came d o w n f r o m the burning bush to find the Lord r e a d y to slay him, and in the end d e n y him the promised land; David's w or k was repaid with plague, and Uzzah's accidental t o u c h of the ark with instant death. Th en in th e story of Job we find the whole point m ade t hat J o b had n o t sinned; his suffering was b r o u g h t on by G od just to win a bet with Satan, who is seen as one of God's court. Certainly in this view God has a seamy and sadistic side. This was the experience of men who wrestled with the spiritual world in the belief t h a t G od is t he only p o w e r in the universe. Meanwhile anot her great c o n t r i b u t i o n t o religious understanding and practice was made in Persia by the p r o p h e t Zoroaster, who lived a b o u t the seventh c e n t u r y B.C. It is strange h o w little aware Westerners are of t he influence o f Persian ideas on Western civilization. This empire, with its state religion o f Zoroastrianism, was a powerful political and cultural force f o r nearly twelve centuries, up to its conquest by Islam. As its beliefs came into c o n t a c t with those of Greece and Palestine, t h e y left an i m pact t hat is a part of all o u r religious heritage t o d a y . The m y t h s from which these beliefs came saw two principal gods, A h u r a

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Mazda (Ormazd) who brought good, and Ahriman whose actions and influence were responsible for the evil in the world. Eventually Ahriman would s u m m o n all his subjects for a final assault on the powers of good, and t h e n evil would be defeated. Until then the followers of Ahura Mazda, who would share in the triumph, were given powers to resist evil in the world as it is. The great hero m y t h of Faridun supported this belief. Thus in Zoroastrianism good and evil were both spiritual principles, and the physical world was good or bad as it manifested one or the other spiritual principle. Since spirit as well as matter was both good and evil, this mythological division enabled men to confront these opposites and begin to deal with them. It is hardly possible to state the problem of evil intellectually until it has been mythologically defined; moral action stems from such a division, and it would be difficult to over-emphasize the importance of this mythological conception. But in the Hellenistic period a very different idea t o o k hold wherever Christianity had spread. This was Gnosticism, a religious m o v e m e n t that is little understood today. Even the name is confusing to us; it comes from the Greek word for knowledge, but Gnosticism with a capital G refers to a special, revealed knowledge, a secret m y t h . While all religion implies a kind of revealed knowledge, the Gnostic saw his m y t h as given by a good God who had created only the spiritual realm. An evil, fallen one created the material world, making man from a spark of good, and the Gnostic m y t h was necessary to free this soul-spirit from the prison-house of matter and man's body. Thus in Gnosticism the basic duality between good and evil was removed from spiritual reality, and spirit, the only essential good, became split from this material world with all the evil. The roots o f this m y t h o l o g y are difficult to trace. There were hints of it in the teaching of Pythagoras, and even in Plato, but we first find a developed form in Orphism and the mystery religions, and it occurs in Neoplatonism. Its apocalypses and systems appear to have developed out of the Greek glorification of the mind and the consequent later devaluation of the b o d y and matter. They are a logical development from the nascent Greek rationalism, perhaps crossed with Zoroastrianism. But Gnosticism turns the healthy mythological dualism into a cosmology and all matter suffers from devaluation. Because Gnostic m y t h o l o g y does not refer totally to the realm of the spirit, but partly to matter, it soon strays from real m y t h into intellectual absurdity. Its practical implications are simply loaded. The world is evil and the only way to deal with it is to separate out from it. All living in the here and now is devalued. The importance of the body and of acts of love is minimized. Since men were trying to become pure spirit right now, the ancient sects prescribed all manner of asceticism, from avoiding the flesh of animals to abstaining from sexual relations. Strangely enough, as this was simply to prevent conception and keep another piece of soul-spirit from being trapped in matter, some sects f o u n d a better m e t h o d in unlimited prostitution.

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The basic problem of all gnosticism is the psychological fact that its emphasis brings an inflation of man's intellectual and spiritual side and an inevitable collapse into w ha t is ignored and slighted. The b o d y whose instinctual life is rejected sooner or later takes its revenge, u n e x p e c t e d l y with n o chance for conscious direction. This is how compulsions develop, actions over which we have no control. Once one believes he can isolate evil and completely separate himself f r om it, the evil simply moves into the unconscious where it can act freely on its own. T h e n like a polyvalent god, the person is the angel he intends to be at one m o m e n t , and knifes his b r o th er with all his pent-up spite the next. This kind of dualism and the acco mp an y in g inflation over one's own abilities result in w hat Jung has called enantiodromia, or a constant turning into the opposites. Almost f r o m the beginning, Christianity fought this belief and the m y t h o l o g y t h a t gave rise to it. Officially, the fight was successful, but u n d e r cover there was another story to tell. Christianity and evil In the New T e s t a m e n t there is a mythological dualism with hardly a trace of gnosticism. The New T e s t a m e n t m y t h o l o g y portrays experiences o f good and evil as men come into c o n t a c t with spiritual reality, but it does n o t try to make the material world a scapegoat for the evil. We find all the paraphernalia of angels and demons, the Father, the heavenly kingdom, and Satan and hell. Yet this is anything but an a t t e m p t to make a three-layer universe, as some theologians suggest. The New T e s t am e nt writers were m o r e sophisticated than that. T h e y applied these terms, not to this physical world, but to a spiritual one, separate b u t interpenetrating. The great t h e m e is that, t h r o u g h Christ, G od has destroyed the power of Satan and enables all who follow him to share in th at victory. The New T e s t a m e n t simply maintains t hat this m y t h was enacted in history, as well as again and again in man's imagination. It accepts the existence of spiritual reality: these men knew h u m a n psychic experience t o o well to suggest t ha t this is a m at t er for faith; nor is there e x p e c t a t i o n th at evil will no longer exist. Faith, as t h e y saw it, is the belief t h a t the decisive battle between the powers of God and the forces of Satan and evil had been won. The same engagement could n o w take place, consciously, within any man who sought this conscious ~vay, with the same e x p e c t a t i o n o f victory. Jesus himself said t hat the kingdom of heaven is within (or among y o u as the Greek may mean), and taught t h a t there are b o t h good and evil elements of spiritual reality, angels and demons, heavenly father and destroyer. He taught th at sickness comes largely from nonphysical causes, usually demonic, and t h a t the best way to restore a sick person to health is to release him f r o m them. He also told us to pray n o t t o be led into t e m p t a t i o n , but t o be delivered from the evil one. Even t h o u g h liberal Christianity has tried to

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keep the spotlight of f these elements, the Gospels are alive with them; indeed, large parts are quite unintelligible if these nonphysical, mythological realities are deleted. Exactly the same spirit continues in Acts and in all the letters, with essentially the same mythological usages. There is the same division between th e Spirit that comes from Christ and the demonic with which his disciples are given power to deal. " F o r our fight is n o t against human f o e s . . , but against the superhuman forces of evil in the heavens," Paul specified in Ephesians 6:12, and t o the Colossians he wrote: On that cross he discarded the cosmic powers and authorities like a garment; he made a public spectacle of them and led them as captives in his triumphal procession . . . . You are not to be disqualified by the decision of people who go in for self-mortification and angel-worship, and try to enter into some vision of their own. (2:15 ff.) The b o o k of Revelation is entirely concerned with this view of evil as an experienced reality that must be m e t and dealt with in mythological terms, its final defeat only in the future, and with the warning that this view must n o t be changed, the New T e s t a m e n t closes. F o r centuries this tradition did continue; the great fathers who carried the spirit of Christianity into the Greek-thinking world t urned to m y t h time and again to explain human suffering. Justin Martyr, Origen, Lactantius, Methodius w r ot e long discussions of these inner realities. Athanasius carefully r e p o r t e d St. A n t o n y ' s struggles with the powers of darkness, providing insights o f great psychological value. Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory - - n o n e o f t h e m lost this view. But meanwhile something was happening that has n o t been talked a bout very m uc h by Christians. This was the influence of Gnosticism on the church. While it is n o t hard to see what Christianity offered to Gnostic thinking--its historic savior was ready-made to be the base of a system and Gnosticism b l o o m e d like the r o s e- - y et the idea that there was any influence the other way is harder to grasp. But for f our centuries Christians battled the Gnostic efforts to take over the church, and much of the early teaching came directly o u t of this struggle. The Apostles' Creed itself was written to refute the basic idea of the Gnostics. F r o m the first w o r d s - - " I believe in G od the Father Almighty, Maker o f heaven and e a r t h . . . " - - i t asserts t h a t m at t er is n o t the manifestation of some evil power, t hat Christ was conceived and born as a real h u m a n being with a real b o d y . This Gnosticism denied, for good could n o t have the intimate relation to evil, spirit to m at t er, that the incarnation maintained. Again and again the writings show how intent Christianity was on denying the exclusive evil of material reality. In the process it began t o devalue spiritual evil as well. Many o f the great minds o f that time were being converted to Christianity, and t h e y tried to refute Gnosticism on its own ground, intellectually, rather than experientially and mythologically. As t h e y did so, the germ of an absurdity began to grow in historical Christianity. Evil was n o t real, because G od could n o t be

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conceived of as creating evil. By the time Augustine faced the powerful Manichean heresy in the fourth century, the ground on which the two opponents could meet was already being cut away. Manicheism was the most dualistic of the Gnostic sects, and next to Mithraism, the strongest competitor Christianity faced in the West. Augustine, like most preachers, was preaching partly to himself. He had spent nine years as a " h e a r e r " among the Manicheans and knew only too well where their doctrines of bodily and sexual evils, of moral perfectionism, led. Both he and Leo X left records of admissions by the elect t h a t shocked even the ancient world. In fact, what soured Augustine on this religion was the way evil returned through the back door, through unconscious compulsion. But with all his intellectual defenses, there remained traces of Gnosticism in his moral teaching and practice. And as one defense against the Manicheans, he gave Christian philosophy its first developed statement of the privatio boni, the theology t h a t evil has no substance, but is only the lack of perfection, the divine " j e s t " t h a t deprives man of good. Manicheism was finally suppressed in the fifth century. But Gnostic dualism did n o t die just because it was told to. It came back into Christianity through monasticism and asceticism. It has shown up in sects like the Paulicians who still exist in Russian Armenia, the Bogomils who once dominated Bulgaria, the powerful Cathari in southern France, and also closer to home. Calvinist o r t h o d o x y , with its doctrine of the total depravity of man, its denial of the value of the body, its exaltation of the mind, and the consequent popular equation of sexuality with evil, has left a sizable load of Gnostic belief for modern Protestants to carry. Pietism added to the heritage by exalting the importance of the inner life and denying it to political and physical action. No wonder psychiatrists are not always very happy about religion of this kind; it is this u n h e a l t h y devaluation of man as he is t h a t so often causes psychological distress today. On the other hand, what other way is there to look at evil, except to reject it in one's self and in other people? Everyone knows that the devil is just an idea t h a t is d e a d . . . T h e devil is dead --~

The idea t h a t there could be a spirit of evil moving in the world is an out-and-out absurdity to most people today. But it t o o k a long time for the idea of the devil to die, and it did not happen, as one writer innocently assumes, simply because it was inevitable t h a t sooner or later enlightened men would wake up to the truth. There were historical reasons for the popular demise o f the devil in our culture, none of them necessarily predestined. There was the influence of Augustine and his idea of the privatio b o n o . Augustine was a powerful thinker, and no one really wanted to defend the devil against his picture of God as the s u m m u m b o n u m who can encompass

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n o th in g but good. The trouble is t h a t the devil is n o t a very good intellectual idea. Once the dualism becomes intellectual, once G od is rationally defined rather than experienced, the problem can no longer be faced as a whole. Although mythologically true, the devil is intellectually indefensible, and once it was realized t hat the conception of the powers of evil was " o n l y " a representation of people's experience, no m a t t e r how accurate, the devil began to fade. Then, with a consistency for which we do n o t give man credit, he cut the ground f r o m under the devil. As Aristotle became " t h e Phi l osopher" through the efforts of T hom a s Aquinas, his idea that man has direct cont act with n o t h i n g b u t material reality became standard belief. With only sense experience and reason t o go on, and with no rational place for an evil first cause, enlightened people simply d r o p p e d the devil f r o m consideration. With direct psychic experience no longer admissible as evidence of his reality, the devil was as good as dead. And a nyw ay God himself was becoming more of a first cause than a reality to be experienced. On to p of this, the concrete d e m o n o l o g y t o which people t urned in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries led t o witch hunting, and this t u r n e d intelligent people even m or e away from any reality on which witchcraft could be based. It also gave substance to the practical fear t hat admitting the reality of evil could lead men to lose hope and t o turn to its active service. In the end, as science became dramatically successful and man really began to see himself on an escalator to utopia, m ost men came to believe that they did n o t have t o deal with evil at all. Here was the material universe waiting to be perfected, and t h a t was enough; to keep progressing t ow ard good was all th at was needed. Yet this has n o t resulted in a noticeable decrease in evil. In this period when o t h e r hum a n beings rather than the devil are responsible for devilishness, we have experienced t he two m ost devastating wars in history. Mental illness in all its forms has b e c o m e almost epidemic where this Western idea has taken hold. And what is mental illness--or alcoholism, or the use of LSD, or destructive anger--but the inability to deal with psychic, nonphysical reality? Is it not possible, even likely, that the church has been wrong and that the devil's most successful stratagem has been to convince people th at he does n o t exist? In recent years a renewed concern with mythological evil has shown up in m a n y literary works. Some of the m os t i m p o r t a n t are George MacDonald's Phantasies and Lilith, the magnificent fantasy novels and children's books by C. S. Lewis, as well as his Screwtape Letters, C. S. Eliot's works, particularly Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party, the amazing novels of Charles Williams, and the masterpieces of m o d e r n m y t h , The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien. These works all make the point t h a t just because something is spiritual it does n o t follow t hat it is good, and t h a t those who do n o t recognize the reality of evil and suffer it consciously find parts of their being ut t er l y destroyed. T he philosopher Cyril Joad has also shown in The Return to Religion t hat the rationalistic rejection of evil is no longer tenable because it does n o t a c c ount for the facts of experience.

The Mythology of Evil

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Jung reached the same conclusion as he f o u n d how seldom people could be released from neurotic fear and childish subservience to evil until they took it very seriously. To convince them of its reality and the need to face it, he found m y t h o l o g y and its images and symbols indispensable. Some have called Jung Gnostic or Manichean because of his emphasis on the reality of evil; yet nothing could be further from the truth. If one will allow himself to experience something of the same confrontation of the unconscious that Jung described in his autobiography, he will realize that Jung deals with experiences, not just ideas about them. He simply says that evil cannot be intellectually dismissed or removed. It can only be confronted; for the devil is an empirical truth that can no more be removed by looking away than can the chair in which I sit. Facing up to evil

Indeed, one reason for the powerlessness, the ineffectiveness of m o d e r n Christianity is its failure to take evil seriously and deal directly with it. With no serious m y t h o l o g y of evil, Christianity has nothing to deliver man from o r with--although psychiatry certainly sees that he needs deliverance and offers some tools. If, as our own mythological tradition offers, it is possible to confront and do something about the evil t h a t man experiences at its deepest, most difficult level, then how do we get started on this rather important task? The five suggestions we sketch briefly are both ancient and modern, any one of them subject enough for several full-length discussions. 1) One must first have a point of view about the reality of evil. He must make the hypothesis, at least tentatively, that nonphysical forces of evil do exist, and begin to deal with them. This is worth a try if such forces are even partially responsible for evil in the world. Most of the religions of m a n k i n d have held t h a t they do exist, and as Jung points out, unconsciousness of them is evil par excellence because it allows the powers of darkness free reign in the deep psyche of man; and t h e y then break forth on their own terms in mental and physical illness, in projections, in all the consequent social disruptions from family squabbles to global war, sometimes entirely possessing an individual like Charlie Whitman, or a whole nation. 2) One must have a method. Jung again has pointed out that " a n y o n e who is destined to descend into a deep pit had better set about it with all necessary precautions rather than risk falling into the pit backwards." My experience is that every man, sooner or later, falls into his own private pit, which may be a communal one. The question is -- what method? Logic and rational understanding do n o t seem to help. Reason has little power with a raging mob, or with anxiety, depression, futility, sorrow, or isolation. Until one allows these vague, impalpable feelings to transform themselves into images, there is nothing to deal with. The imaginative faculty of man allows the invisible world to become visible so that the negative and destructive in it can be confronted and mastered. Once there are images, such as those provided by religious ritual, one can use the creative

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imagination and struggle and wrestle with them. All the religions of mankind have provided methods--ranging f r o m meditation to t he Mass--through which creative and positive nonphysical powers are released t o overcome the evil ones. When one can fully accept a faith, these ritual actions are effective and actually deliver one f r o m evil. But when no existing religion is alive for a man, he is c o n f r o n t e d with the far m ore difficult task of allowing his own m y t h o l o g y , his own religion, to be f o r m u l a t e d in him. One does n o t u n d e r t a k e this for fun, as Jung has shown in the sixth chapter of his a u t o b i o g r a p h y ; there is no o t h e r way to deal with the reality o f spiritual evil. 3) One must t hen learn to distinguish spirits, as Paul reminded us so long ago. So o f t e n w ha t seems evil is only G od tripping us up so t hat we cannot run away. When one's ego is b e n t on t he wrong way, t he very forces pushing him to war d health and m a t u r i t y may seem evil. Or the evil itself m a y appear good. The "evil o n e " can appear as an angel of light, and this c o n f r o n t a t i o n o f t e n precedes growth and de ve l opm ent , for God can t u r n even evil into good. Paul worried a b o u t this experience o f evil, warning n o t t o seek grace in this way, and Augustine also discussed the experience, calling it the felix culpa, the h a p p y sin. Finally, there is evil one must avoid at all costs, numinous, powerful, awe-inspiring evil: t h a t of the black mass, of sorcery, and consciously-directed hatred. 4) Victory over evil is never won w i t h o u t sacrifice. The lesser but real good must be given up or d e s t r o y e d if the b e t t e r is to be achieved, and one must k n o w t ha t he has to struggle, t o suffer, even risk being crippled for life as was Jacob, or it is n o t sacrifice. Jesus spoke clearly of the way of the cross, o f facing the reality of evil, which pietism and " t h e power of positive t h i n k i n g " try to avoid. Indeed, those who d e m a n d of God a few jiggers of wish-fulfillment to offset every dash of bitters have p r o b a b l y made a mistake and g o tten up to t he wrong rail. This way of life demands courage of man, all th e f o r t i t u d e he can muster, b o t h intellectual and intestinal; it is the way of the hero w ho must go t hr ough the dark night o f soul. 5) Every hero who continues finds his places of rest and resolution, but these are much m or e like way stations than final resting places in a church graveyard. One need n o t fear a static resolution in this life or the next. This process does n o t happen once and for all, b u t continues again and again. As soon as one resolution is accomplished, the same dialectic process begins once again. There is no measuring the depths or the heights to which the h u m a n psyche can pe ne t r at e as it deals with the reality of evil in a mythological, imaginative, religious way and goes the way of the hero, t he way o f the cross. Out o f the conscious e n c o u n t e r with evil come life and renewed energy. Christianity puts this t r u t h in unmistakable terms and maintains it for this life as well as in terms of eternal life. Or, in Jung's words: "T hese talks with th e ' O t h e r ' were m y p r o f o u n d e s t experiences: on the one hand a b l o o d y struggle, on the ot her supreme e c s t a s y . . , an annihilating fire and an indescribable grace."

The mythology of evil.

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