This episode and the following are a tour of some of the world’s apocalyptic traditions outside of the Judaic, Gnostic, Christian, and Millenarian which have been explored already. This episode includes those of Islam, Norse, Egypt, Aztec, Maya, Inca, China, and Japan. By this means we can appreciate one of the features of the archetype – its widespread occurrence across the world’s civilizations.

The last five chapters of Answer to Job clearly show that Jung believed that the shadow in our psyche and the technological means at our disposal leave us in a most precarious apocalyptic situation ....

“For the dark God has slipped the atom bomb and chemical weapons into his [humanity’s] hands and given him the power to empty out the apocalyptic vials of wrath on his fellow creatures.”

Jung was by no means clear that humanity could rise to the level required. Neither is it clear how this realisation may have affected his moods towards the end of his life but what is well known is that he spent his final days dictating his last visions to his daughter and Marie-Louise von Franz. These were often very somber (including images of global devastation), but he reportedly faced them with a sense of "objective" calm rather than despair.

The book Answer to Job was the one work Jung said he would never change. In it he “psychoanalyses” Yahweh, challenges the Christian God, insists that God, across our evolution, has been entering into humanity as a unconscious complex of opposites requiring integration through the human psyche. This is the purpose of human consciousness and this book was Jung’s bible. Like the Christian bible it ends with an apocalypse – an unveiling.

This episode explores the Gnostic worldview, flourishing in the first centuries of the Common Era, which offers one of religious history's most radical apocalyptic visions. It is founded on a profoundly dualistic understanding of reality: the material cosmos is a prison, and humanity is a tragic hybrid—a divine spark of light trapped in corrupt flesh and matter. The influences of Gnostic thought are traced in a succession of artists and visionaries from William Blake to D.H. Lawrence.

For those who want more information on booking for the Archetypal Constellations workshop "Resourcing Our Future", led by Richard Olivier, here is the link: https://www.wholepartnership.com/booking/resourcing-our-future-a-masterclass-on-archetypal-constellations-with-richard-olivier/

The apocalypse isn't just an ancient myth, but an archetype, a pattern that still shapes our world. The same emotional and psychological forces that drove medieval peasants to embark on doomed crusades or to whip themselves in public, are the very forces driving political movements today. The archetypal forces that drove these millenarian movements are very much present in the politics of the Western world at this moment.

The Christian apocalyptic tradition is explored, focusing on the prophecies and warnings of the Gospels and the Book of Revelation. These texts contain a dramatic narrative of cataclysmic events: the end days, the Second Coming, the Rapture, the chosen few, the final judgment, Armageddon, the defeat of Satan, and the reign of Christ’s kingdom. This tradition has provided a reference point for Western civilization across the millennia and is still active today. Its archetypal content is emphasized, as well as its psychological roots.

The deepest archetypes are symbolic narratives, like dreams, that reveal the nature of the psyche itself—its origins, for instance, or even its potential ending. The Book of Genesis serves as an example of the former, while this episode explores the latter—the theme of the apocalypse—through various writings in the Jewish tradition, including the Books of Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Isaiah, and Enoch. This is not simply ancient history, but is highly relevant to our contemporary world, for we live in an Age of the Apocalypse.

The archetype of the Self is Jung's answer to the crisis of civilization in our age. In a world grappling with the relativism and indeterminacy of post-modernism, where grand narratives have collapsed and meaning seems fluid, with a host of other modern philosophical ailments that breed anxiety and nihilism, the Self offers an inner, inherent source of meaning and direction. It suggests that beyond the shifting sands of external opinions and cultural trends, there is an enduring core, a guiding principle within each individual. It is an antidote to the spiritual rootlessness of our age and a light for those seeking an authentic and meaningful life beyond superficial materialism or ideological extremism.