“The opposites always balance one another—good and evil, beauty and ugliness, love and hate, spirit and matter. Heaven and hell are born together. The dissolution of opposites is the precondition of the highest consciousness.”
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The Conjunction of Opposites
- Thread starter Colo Millz
- Start date
The Chamber
An iron door creaks shut. Clarice Starling might as well be standing outside. The stone cell is lit only by a narrow window slit. Aquinas sits in perfect composure, hands folded on the table. Jung circles slowly, as though testing the air.
Jung (low, deliberate):
You built your cathedrals of thought stone by stone—Summa contra Gentiles, Summa Theologiae. Order, hierarchy, clarity. But tell me, Thomas: when you closed your eyes at night, was it so orderly inside your head?
Aquinas (calmly):
The order was not mine, Doctor. It was God’s. Reason was the ladder, analogy the rung.
Jung (smirks):
Analogy? A pale diet. The unconscious doesn’t deal in “greater dissimilarity.” It vomits dragons, saints, incest, apocalypse. Archetypes, not syllogisms.
Aquinas (without flinching):
And yet even your dragons bow before Being itself. Archetypes are but echoes, shadows cast by the one divine Light.
Jung (leaning in, voice lowering):
Or perhaps your Light is itself an archetype—an image born of man’s need to unify what he cannot bear to hold apart. Light against darkness. Christ against Satan. Coincidence of opposites—terrible, necessary.
Aquinas (a faint smile, dangerous in its composure):
To make God a symbol among symbols is to mistake the mirror for the face.
Jung (taunting now):
And to make God “actus purus,” stripped of all image, is to cut out the heart and call the body whole. Tell me, Thomas… did you never hear the whisper of your own shadow while writing your Summa?
Aquinas (a pause, gaze sharpens):
Thrill me with your acumen, Doctor. But know this: temptation speaks in riddles too. My shadow, as you call it, was conquered by grace, not indulged by dream-analysis.
Jung (laughs softly, circling like a predator):
Grace? Or repression dressed in holy robes? The psyche is not conquered—it is endured, integrated. Deny the darkness and it comes for you in other guises. Saints who scourge themselves. Monks haunted by visions.
Aquinas (suddenly firm, voice resonant):
Better a scourged saint than a man swallowed whole by his own phantasms.
Jung (with a glint of triumph):
And yet your saints came to me, centuries later, as patients. Broken by the weight of the opposites you denied them.
Silence. The torch flickers. They lock eyes across the table—one with unyielding serenity, the other with a dangerous smile. Each man certain the other’s system cannot contain the truth he himself has grasped.
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Jung (quiet, conspiratorial):
You once wrote, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” Faith as fortress. But tell me, Thomas—what happens when the fortress becomes a prison?
Aquinas (measured):
A prison is a place of confinement. Faith liberates; it is the opening of the soul to God.
Jung (leaning in, whisper):
Or the shutting out of the soul’s own voices. Those saints you praise—how many heard the Devil in their dreams, saw visions of lust and terror? They were not liberated. They were haunted.
Aquinas (voice steady, but firmer now):
Haunting is the trick of the Enemy. Discernment is the remedy. We test the spirits. We do not surrender to them.
Jung (smiling, dangerous):
And yet you see—they still came. Archetypes battering at the gates. The anima in her seductions. The shadow in its rage. Even your Christ, Thomas—He is an archetype: the Self, wholeness, the union of opposites.
Aquinas (sitting straighter, eyes narrowing):
Christ is not symbol. Christ is Truth incarnate. You mistake psychological pattern for divine person.
Jung (voice rising, with a predator’s relish):
No—you mistake divine person for psychological pattern denied. You place Him on an unreachable throne, and forget that He bleeds in the human psyche, torn between heaven and hell.
Jung leans back, savoring the moment. Aquinas’ lips press thin, but his gaze does not falter.
Aquinas (soft, deliberate):
Your analysis is clever, Doctor. But cleverness is not wisdom. You probe the shadows and call it depth. I see beyond shadow and light—to Being itself, where opposites dissolve.
Jung (snaps his fingers, almost gleeful):
Dissolve? No, Thomas. They must be borne. Held together until they transfigure the soul. That is the crucifixion within. Not erased, not dismissed—endured.
Aquinas (a flicker of heat in his voice):
Then you crucify yourself endlessly, without resurrection.
Jung (smiles, low and taunting):
Better crucified in truth than resurrected in denial.
They stare at each other. A long pause. The chamber feels colder.
Aquinas (leaning slightly forward, voice like iron):
You circle like a wolf around the sheepfold, Doctor. But wolves forget—the Shepherd is not absent. He comes with rod and staff.
Jung (chuckles, shaking his head):
And still the wolf lives in the fold, Thomas. In every heart. You would banish him with syllogisms. I would teach men to face him. To learn what he guards.
You once wrote, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” Faith as fortress. But tell me, Thomas—what happens when the fortress becomes a prison?
Aquinas (measured):
A prison is a place of confinement. Faith liberates; it is the opening of the soul to God.
Jung (leaning in, whisper):
Or the shutting out of the soul’s own voices. Those saints you praise—how many heard the Devil in their dreams, saw visions of lust and terror? They were not liberated. They were haunted.
Aquinas (voice steady, but firmer now):
Haunting is the trick of the Enemy. Discernment is the remedy. We test the spirits. We do not surrender to them.
Jung (smiling, dangerous):
And yet you see—they still came. Archetypes battering at the gates. The anima in her seductions. The shadow in its rage. Even your Christ, Thomas—He is an archetype: the Self, wholeness, the union of opposites.
Aquinas (sitting straighter, eyes narrowing):
Christ is not symbol. Christ is Truth incarnate. You mistake psychological pattern for divine person.
Jung (voice rising, with a predator’s relish):
No—you mistake divine person for psychological pattern denied. You place Him on an unreachable throne, and forget that He bleeds in the human psyche, torn between heaven and hell.
Jung leans back, savoring the moment. Aquinas’ lips press thin, but his gaze does not falter.
Aquinas (soft, deliberate):
Your analysis is clever, Doctor. But cleverness is not wisdom. You probe the shadows and call it depth. I see beyond shadow and light—to Being itself, where opposites dissolve.
Jung (snaps his fingers, almost gleeful):
Dissolve? No, Thomas. They must be borne. Held together until they transfigure the soul. That is the crucifixion within. Not erased, not dismissed—endured.
Aquinas (a flicker of heat in his voice):
Then you crucify yourself endlessly, without resurrection.
Jung (smiles, low and taunting):
Better crucified in truth than resurrected in denial.
They stare at each other. A long pause. The chamber feels colder.
Aquinas (leaning slightly forward, voice like iron):
You circle like a wolf around the sheepfold, Doctor. But wolves forget—the Shepherd is not absent. He comes with rod and staff.
Jung (chuckles, shaking his head):
And still the wolf lives in the fold, Thomas. In every heart. You would banish him with syllogisms. I would teach men to face him. To learn what he guards.
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Jung: Quid pro quo, Father. You want to peer into my collective unconscious? Tell me first—what haunts the corridors of your own intellect? That moment when you gazed upon the divine and declared all your writings as straw. What did you see that silenced the Summa?
Aquinas: Bold, psychologist. Very well. It was a vision, not of words, but of essence—God as the unmoved Mover, pure act, beyond the quibbles of essence and existence. My tomes became chaff in the wind of eternity. Now, your turn. You speak of archetypes, these primordial images bubbling from the depths. Are they not echoes of the Forms, or perhaps the angels themselves, intermediaries between God and man?
Jung: Echoes? They are the architects of the psyche, Thomas—universal patterns etched into every soul, shaping myths, dreams, religions. Your angels might be one such archetype: messengers from the unconscious, not heaven. But tell me, quid pro quo—what terrors did you face in reconciling the pagan philosopher with your Christian God? Did doubt ever creep in, like a shadow self, whispering that the Prime Mover might not be your Yahweh?
Aquinas: Doubt? The intellect seeks truth as the will seeks good. Aristotle's errors were veils, lifted by grace. No shadow self, but the light of faith illuminating reason. Yet you, Jung, posit a collective unconscious—a sea of inherited memories. Is this not akin to original sin, a shared wound in humanity's soul? Or do you deny the Fall, seeing it as mere myth?
Jung: Myth? Myths are the language of the soul, more real than your scholastic distinctions. Original sin could be the archetype of the wounded healer—the expulsion from Eden as the birth of consciousness from blissful ignorance. But quid pro quo, Saint Thomas. In your visions of heaven, did you ever encounter the anima—the feminine soul within the man? Or was your God too patriarchal, suppressing the Sophia that whispers wisdom?
Aquinas: Sophia is divine Wisdom, personified in Christ, not some inner siren. But your anima intrigues—perhaps a reflection of Mary, the mediatrix of graces. Suppress? No, integrate, as I did faith and reason. Now, reveal: your shadow, this dark side you claim we all harbor. Is it the devil incarnate, or merely untamed passion? How does one confront it without falling into heresy?
Jung: The shadow is the unlived life, Thomas—the parts we deny, projecting onto others as evil. Your devil might be humanity's collective shadow, externalized in theology. To confront it? Integration, not exorcism. Face it in dreams, in active imagination. But tell me, quid pro quo—what would you ask of your own shadow if it appeared before you? That corpulent friar wrestling with the temptations of the flesh, or the intellect's pride?
Aquinas: Pride? The sin of angels. If my shadow appeared, I would question it as I did the philosophers: What truth do you hide? For even darkness serves the greater light. Your methods sound like alchemy—transmuting base metals of the psyche into gold. Is God the philosopher's stone in your system, or merely a symbol?
Jung: God as archetype—the Self, the mandala of wholeness. Not your personal deity, but the unifying force in the psyche. Alchemy was the precursor to psychology, turning inner lead to spiritual gold. But quid pro quo ends here, Thomas. You've given me a feast for thought; take this: The soul is not just immortal—it's infinite, a microcosm of the cosmos, where your angels dance with my archetypes in eternal dialogue.
Aquinas: Then let us continue this dance, Dr. Jung. For in seeking, we find not answers, but deeper questions.
Jung: Quid pro quo: You've integrated faith and reason like a master builder. But what of the alchemists you dismissed as heretics? Their transmutations—were they not shadows of your own eucharistic mysteries, turning bread into divine substance?
Aquinas: Alchemists chased illusions, mistaking matter for spirit. The Eucharist is no metaphor, but real presence—substance changed while accidents remain. Yet your psychology alchemizes the soul itself. Tell me, does this process heal, or merely delude? Is the Self you pursue God, or a golden calf forged in the fires of ego?
Jung: Healing comes from integration, not suppression. The Self is the God-image within, not your transcendent Other. But delusion? Ah, that's the risk of any quest. Quid pro quo, Father: In your Summa, you argue for God's existence through five ways. Which one whispers doubt in the quiet hours? The unmoved Mover, perhaps, who might as well be the impersonal force of nature, devoid of your loving Trinity?
Aquinas: Doubt is the forge of faith; it tempers belief. The ways are demonstrations, not whispers—motion, causation, necessity, degrees, design—all pointing to the First Cause. Nature's force? Mere secondary causation, animated by the Prime. But you, Jung, with your synchronicity—meaningful coincidences without cause. Is this not providence in secular guise, or chaos masquerading as order?
Jung: Synchronicity bridges the psyche and the world, acausal yet meaningful, like your miracles but without divine intervention. It's the universe winking at the soul. Quid pro quo: Your celibacy, Thomas—the denial of the body for the spirit. Did the anima ever rebel, appearing in dreams as temptress or muse? Or did you sublimate her into your devotion to the Virgin?
Aquinas: The body is the soul's instrument, not its prison. Celibacy frees the intellect for higher unions. Dreams? They are sense impressions reordered by reason, not sirens from the depths. Yet your anima as inner woman—perhaps a dim reflection of Eve redeemed, or Wisdom calling in the streets. Now, confront this: Your mandala, the circle of wholeness. Is it not the wheel of samsara, trapping souls in cycles, or does it echo the eternal return to God?
Jung: The mandala is the psyche's compass, guiding through chaos to center. Not entrapment, but liberation from one-sidedness. Your heaven might be the ultimate mandala—hierarchies of angels orbiting the divine. But quid pro quo: What if your vision at Mass, that mystical ecstasy, was not God but the eruption of the unconscious? A peak experience, as I'd call it, dissolving the ego in archetypal flood.
Aquinas: Blasphemy or insight? The vision was grace, not eruption—union with the Infinite, where words fail. If your unconscious holds such power, then perhaps it is the soul's antechamber to God. But tell me of your Red Book, those visions you chronicled. Were they divine inspirations, or dialogues with demons? Did Philemon, your spirit guide, bear wings like Gabriel?
Jung: Philemon was an archetype, a wiser self emerging from the depths—not demon, but daimon, in the ancient sense. The Red Book was my confrontation with the unconscious, a voluntary madness to find sanity. Quid pro quo ends not yet, Thomas. In your era, heresy burned at the stake. What modern heresy haunts you now? Freud's id, perhaps, reducing soul to sex drive?
Aquinas: Heresy is error persisted in willfully. Freud's drives are passions unchecked, but the soul transcends them through virtue. Yet your collective unconscious might house the virtues themselves—innate potentials for good. One last exchange: If we met in the afterlife, would your archetypes bow to my angels, or merge in some grand synthesis?
Jung: Synthesis, always synthesis—that's the alchemical wedding. Angels and archetypes dancing in the great mandala of existence. Until then, Thomas, keep questioning. The soul thrives on it.
Aquinas: As does the mind. Farewell, seeker of shadows. May light find you.
[The chamber fades, echoes of their words lingering like incense, bridging centuries in an unending pursuit of truth.]
Aquinas: Bold, psychologist. Very well. It was a vision, not of words, but of essence—God as the unmoved Mover, pure act, beyond the quibbles of essence and existence. My tomes became chaff in the wind of eternity. Now, your turn. You speak of archetypes, these primordial images bubbling from the depths. Are they not echoes of the Forms, or perhaps the angels themselves, intermediaries between God and man?
Jung: Echoes? They are the architects of the psyche, Thomas—universal patterns etched into every soul, shaping myths, dreams, religions. Your angels might be one such archetype: messengers from the unconscious, not heaven. But tell me, quid pro quo—what terrors did you face in reconciling the pagan philosopher with your Christian God? Did doubt ever creep in, like a shadow self, whispering that the Prime Mover might not be your Yahweh?
Aquinas: Doubt? The intellect seeks truth as the will seeks good. Aristotle's errors were veils, lifted by grace. No shadow self, but the light of faith illuminating reason. Yet you, Jung, posit a collective unconscious—a sea of inherited memories. Is this not akin to original sin, a shared wound in humanity's soul? Or do you deny the Fall, seeing it as mere myth?
Jung: Myth? Myths are the language of the soul, more real than your scholastic distinctions. Original sin could be the archetype of the wounded healer—the expulsion from Eden as the birth of consciousness from blissful ignorance. But quid pro quo, Saint Thomas. In your visions of heaven, did you ever encounter the anima—the feminine soul within the man? Or was your God too patriarchal, suppressing the Sophia that whispers wisdom?
Aquinas: Sophia is divine Wisdom, personified in Christ, not some inner siren. But your anima intrigues—perhaps a reflection of Mary, the mediatrix of graces. Suppress? No, integrate, as I did faith and reason. Now, reveal: your shadow, this dark side you claim we all harbor. Is it the devil incarnate, or merely untamed passion? How does one confront it without falling into heresy?
Jung: The shadow is the unlived life, Thomas—the parts we deny, projecting onto others as evil. Your devil might be humanity's collective shadow, externalized in theology. To confront it? Integration, not exorcism. Face it in dreams, in active imagination. But tell me, quid pro quo—what would you ask of your own shadow if it appeared before you? That corpulent friar wrestling with the temptations of the flesh, or the intellect's pride?
Aquinas: Pride? The sin of angels. If my shadow appeared, I would question it as I did the philosophers: What truth do you hide? For even darkness serves the greater light. Your methods sound like alchemy—transmuting base metals of the psyche into gold. Is God the philosopher's stone in your system, or merely a symbol?
Jung: God as archetype—the Self, the mandala of wholeness. Not your personal deity, but the unifying force in the psyche. Alchemy was the precursor to psychology, turning inner lead to spiritual gold. But quid pro quo ends here, Thomas. You've given me a feast for thought; take this: The soul is not just immortal—it's infinite, a microcosm of the cosmos, where your angels dance with my archetypes in eternal dialogue.
Aquinas: Then let us continue this dance, Dr. Jung. For in seeking, we find not answers, but deeper questions.
Jung: Quid pro quo: You've integrated faith and reason like a master builder. But what of the alchemists you dismissed as heretics? Their transmutations—were they not shadows of your own eucharistic mysteries, turning bread into divine substance?
Aquinas: Alchemists chased illusions, mistaking matter for spirit. The Eucharist is no metaphor, but real presence—substance changed while accidents remain. Yet your psychology alchemizes the soul itself. Tell me, does this process heal, or merely delude? Is the Self you pursue God, or a golden calf forged in the fires of ego?
Jung: Healing comes from integration, not suppression. The Self is the God-image within, not your transcendent Other. But delusion? Ah, that's the risk of any quest. Quid pro quo, Father: In your Summa, you argue for God's existence through five ways. Which one whispers doubt in the quiet hours? The unmoved Mover, perhaps, who might as well be the impersonal force of nature, devoid of your loving Trinity?
Aquinas: Doubt is the forge of faith; it tempers belief. The ways are demonstrations, not whispers—motion, causation, necessity, degrees, design—all pointing to the First Cause. Nature's force? Mere secondary causation, animated by the Prime. But you, Jung, with your synchronicity—meaningful coincidences without cause. Is this not providence in secular guise, or chaos masquerading as order?
Jung: Synchronicity bridges the psyche and the world, acausal yet meaningful, like your miracles but without divine intervention. It's the universe winking at the soul. Quid pro quo: Your celibacy, Thomas—the denial of the body for the spirit. Did the anima ever rebel, appearing in dreams as temptress or muse? Or did you sublimate her into your devotion to the Virgin?
Aquinas: The body is the soul's instrument, not its prison. Celibacy frees the intellect for higher unions. Dreams? They are sense impressions reordered by reason, not sirens from the depths. Yet your anima as inner woman—perhaps a dim reflection of Eve redeemed, or Wisdom calling in the streets. Now, confront this: Your mandala, the circle of wholeness. Is it not the wheel of samsara, trapping souls in cycles, or does it echo the eternal return to God?
Jung: The mandala is the psyche's compass, guiding through chaos to center. Not entrapment, but liberation from one-sidedness. Your heaven might be the ultimate mandala—hierarchies of angels orbiting the divine. But quid pro quo: What if your vision at Mass, that mystical ecstasy, was not God but the eruption of the unconscious? A peak experience, as I'd call it, dissolving the ego in archetypal flood.
Aquinas: Blasphemy or insight? The vision was grace, not eruption—union with the Infinite, where words fail. If your unconscious holds such power, then perhaps it is the soul's antechamber to God. But tell me of your Red Book, those visions you chronicled. Were they divine inspirations, or dialogues with demons? Did Philemon, your spirit guide, bear wings like Gabriel?
Jung: Philemon was an archetype, a wiser self emerging from the depths—not demon, but daimon, in the ancient sense. The Red Book was my confrontation with the unconscious, a voluntary madness to find sanity. Quid pro quo ends not yet, Thomas. In your era, heresy burned at the stake. What modern heresy haunts you now? Freud's id, perhaps, reducing soul to sex drive?
Aquinas: Heresy is error persisted in willfully. Freud's drives are passions unchecked, but the soul transcends them through virtue. Yet your collective unconscious might house the virtues themselves—innate potentials for good. One last exchange: If we met in the afterlife, would your archetypes bow to my angels, or merge in some grand synthesis?
Jung: Synthesis, always synthesis—that's the alchemical wedding. Angels and archetypes dancing in the great mandala of existence. Until then, Thomas, keep questioning. The soul thrives on it.
Aquinas: As does the mind. Farewell, seeker of shadows. May light find you.
[The chamber fades, echoes of their words lingering like incense, bridging centuries in an unending pursuit of truth.]
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Comic books/super hero movies are obsessed with balancing good vs evil. It makes good fiction, but it isn't reality.
If you look at the Biblical perspective, good existed for untold eternity before evil manifested itself. Evil is allowed to exist for a short period of time. Good is restored for eternity. Hardly opposites that balance one another. In the face of eternal good, a temporary evil never stood a chance.
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Just a passing phase.
Kind of like - adolescence.
Evil can dominate a lifetime, a generation, even a culture. The Nazi terror was not ‘temporary’ for those who perished. To minimize evil is to blind oneself to its real force in human affairs.
Evil was not "temporary" for Anne Frank.
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Isaiah 45:7 – “I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil (raʿ); I the Lord do all these things.”
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2 Corinthians 5:21 – “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
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Amos 3:6
Shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?
Lamentations 3:38
Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?
Job 2:10
Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?
Exodus 4:11
Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD?
Ezekiel 20:25–26
So I gave them other statutes that were not good and laws through which they could not live; I defiled them through their gifts—the sacrifice of every firstborn—that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the LORD.
2 Thessalonians 2:11
God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false.
Shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?
Lamentations 3:38
Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?
Job 2:10
Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?
Exodus 4:11
Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD?
Ezekiel 20:25–26
So I gave them other statutes that were not good and laws through which they could not live; I defiled them through their gifts—the sacrifice of every firstborn—that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the LORD.
2 Thessalonians 2:11
God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false.
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Gen 1:2 shows us a dark, unform world of chaos that is transformed by light ending in it's antithesis of the 7th day contrasting incomplete/complete, dark/light, empty/full, disorder/order, chaos/rest, etc... Rest is shown as the answer to the chaos not it's compliment. Creation can can be viewed as a salvation metaphor where we are the darkness that light is spoken into and we are transformed into rest. It can also foreshadow Christ, baptism, the resurrection, and the new heaven and earth among others.
Christ does not find harmony with death, he conquers it. Revelation does not show us an great equalization, it instead takes death and Hades and the sea (the "deep" of Gen 1:2) and throws them in the lake of fire. Then heaven and earth pass away to present a new heaven and earth as one, spiritual/physical as one, where there is no death or pain.
I don't see the Biblical narrative as a yin/yang justice, although in this time the two are contrasted ultimately the message is the destruction of evil and the restoration of all things.
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Yin/Yang?
Good will ultimately triumph over evil.
In the meantime though, let me ask you this:
Are you suggesting for every bank, there should be a bank robber?
For every Matt Dillon, there should be a John Dillinger?
For every child born, there should be a child aborted?
For every family with a savings account, there should be a family in debt?
Etc?
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Then how do the opposites achieve balance, if they shouldn't offset each other?
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Anyway I wouldn't say any opposites are "balanced".
They exist in a kind of dynamic tension.
If you identify only with “goodness,” you repress your capacity for aggression, selfishness, etc. which then controls you.
To learn, it requires that I acknowledge and integrate my capacity for evil — not to erase goodness, but to create wholeness.
They exist in a kind of dynamic tension.
If you identify only with “goodness,” you repress your capacity for aggression, selfishness, etc. which then controls you.
To learn, it requires that I acknowledge and integrate my capacity for evil — not to erase goodness, but to create wholeness.
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What do you make of the hard passages quoted above which indicate that God is responsible for evil, or at least, calamity?
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The Hebrew word for "evil" (ra') in this context means calamity, disaster, or trouble, not moral evil or sin. The verse emphasizes that God is not the author of moral evil but is in ultimate control of all events, including those that seem bad, to bring about His purposes and to judge or discipline those who rebel against Him.
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