I thought it appropriate for a number of reasons –
to recount: In the full pattern of the mystery of Christ
which incorporates also the “psychic” – we find
1:Incarnation 2:Baptism 3:Transfiguration 4:Crucifixion 5:
Resurrection, 6: Ascent – and most significant 7: Descent
to assist. In the apocryphal story of Jesus descent into Hades,
He does so with the intent of “completing the word” or “completing
the prophecy” – but in a sense, of becoming completely the salvific
agent on all levels.
The Valentinian school appreciates this event as taking place before
creation, before “the fall” – before Adam.
Being as it is – this is before 1. in the pattern, but the emanation and
descent of Christ begins long before all events pertaining to humanity
as such.
“The function of the Image of Christ, as it relates to the “Inner Man” and
the “Indwelling Christ” of Mysticism and early Christian theology as well –
is to bring about a centering of the human personality from an extroverted
and unfocused condition of confusion and chaos into an integrated Mandala
representing the fullness and emptyness of the Origin – the Divine Self.
If this Image, then, to us consists of the stuff of History and Legend we
are trapped in the extroverted condition of being unfocused, lost in
details and the interrelationship of every component of the actual Self
with counterparts associative on the exterior, the outside of things. The
Christ of History is impotent in giving solace to the longings of the
Spiritual man, the Man that seeks communion with the divine – it is a
finding of many a mystic that not only in relationship to the world of
phenomena, but also the Cosmos of Time and Space – the Divine, although
much searched for in these regions, are not to be found.
The incarnation of the Logos, rather than bringing the Divine into the World, in Gnostic exegesis, confronts the conscious dweller inside the context of the World with an Image of the wholly transcendent and the wholly “other”.
The Gnostic Christ is the one voice that would state, in the midst of flesh
and mortality, “I am from another race” and “What I am, you also can
become, if you follow me”. The Christ of the Christian Mass which is the
topic proper that C.G.Jung deals with in the Essay “Transformation
symbolism of the Mass” – invites the Christian to partake of its blood and
body as vitalizing agents, having the precise function that Jung ascribes
to it. It is broken up into particles and particulars from a state of
original Union, it gives its union and integrity up in order to be received
and found within the communicant, as he experiences communion with the
Divine, the wholly Other – and what it produces as a result, in the
recipient of the Bread and Wine experiences a result that is the
counterpart to the breaking asunder, he becomes whole, he is established
after the pattern of unitive and integral Order that is present in the
Pleroma or fullness above and transcendent of his earthly condition.
Partaking in the matter of flesh and the matter of blood will not help him
achieve these ends, but as Christ is known to have the quality of
Transfiguration – as demonstrated at the Baptism in Jordan, the
Transfiguration at Mount Tabor, the crucifixion mystery as experienced by
John mentioned briefly above, the resurrection and the ascension, and also,
in a sense – in the Mystery of the Mass.
Through it He brings this quality into the elements so that they become his
Blood, his vital life force, what has been referred to as “the Living
Water” in the Holy Scriptures of Christendom – and the Body, his Logos
Nature as the incarnating prinsciple, his Nature and Substance – not from
mere Matter or mere Symbol, but from the Incarnation Mystery itself, the
very activity of focusing, receiving and responding. For this reason there
is absolutely no questions raised concerned the aspect of Christian
sacramental practise that rationalist moderns are apalled at and has
problems relating to – namely the Mystery and the Miracle of the
Transubstantiation.”