The Timaeus, which was the first to propound a triadic formula for the God-image in philosophical terms, starts off with the ominous question: “One, two, threebutwhere is the fourth?” This question is, as we know, taken up again in the Cabiri scene in Faust:
Three we brought with us,
<_>The fourth would not come
He was the right one
<_>Who thought for them all
When Goethe says that the fourth was the one “who thought for them all,” we rather suspect that the fourth was Goethe's own thinking function
CW11 ¶ 244COMPARISON BETWEEN PLATO'S
AND PYTHAGORAS' THINKING
As compared with the trinitarian thinking of Plato, ancient Greek philosophy favoured thinking of a quaternary type. In Pythagoras the great role was played not by three but by four; the Pythagorean oath, for instance, says that the tetraktys “contains the roots of eternal nature.” The Pythagorean school was dominated by the idea that the soul was a square and not a triangle. The origin of these ideas lies far back in the dark prehistory of Greek thought. The quaternity is an archetype of almost universal occurrence. It forms the logical basis for any whole judgment. If one wishes to pass such a judgment, it must have this fourfold aspect. For instance, if you want to describe the horizon as a whole, you name the four quarters of heaven. Three is not a natural coefficient of order, but an artificial one. There are four elements, four prime qualities, four colours, four castes, four ways of spiritual development in Buddhism, etc. So, too, there are four aspects of psychological orientation, beyond which nothing fundamental remains to be said
CW11 ¶ 246In Plato the quaternity takes the form of a cube, which he correlates with earth. Lü Pu-weisays: “Heaven's way is round, earth's way is square”
CW11 ¶ 247THE `FOURTH' SIGNIFIES `REALIZATION'
Ever since the Timaeus the “fourth” has signified “realization,” i.e., entry into an essentially different condition, that of worldly materiality, which, it is authoritatively stated, is ruled by the Prince of this worldfor matter is the diametrical opposite of spirit. It is the true abode of the devil, whose hellish hearth-fire burns deep in the interior of the earth, while the shining spirit soars in the aether, freed from the shackles of gravity
CW11 ¶ 251GERHARD DORN
I would like to call attention to Gerhard Dorn, a physician and alchemist, and a native of Frankfurt. He took great exception to the traditional quaternity of the basic principles of his art, and also to the fourfold nature of its goal, the lapis philosophorum. It seemed to him that this was a heresy, since the principle that ruled the world was a Trinity
CW11 ¶ 262THE QUATERNITY MUST
BE OF THE DEVIL
The quaternity must therefore be of the devil. Four, he maintained, was a doubling of two, and two was made on the second day of Creation, but God was obviously not altogether pleased with the result of his handiwork that evening. The binarius is the devil of discord and, what is worse, of feminine nature. (In East and West alike even numbers are feminine.) The cause of dissatisfaction was that, on this ominous second day of Creation, just as with Ahura-Mazda, a split was revealed in God's nature. Out of it crept the “four-horned serpent,” who promptly succeeded in seducing Eve, because she was related to him by reason of her binary nature. (“Man was created by God, woman by the ape of God.”)
CW11 ¶ 262DEVIL AS THE APING
SHADOW OF GOD
The devil is the aping shadow of God, thein Gnosticism and also in Greek alchemy. He is “Lord of this world,” in whose shadow man was born, fatally tainted with the original sin brought about by the devil. Christ, according to the Gnostic view, cast off the shadow he was born with and remained without sin
CW11 ¶ 263TWO CORRESPONDING ELEMENTS
IN THE QUATERNITY SCHEMA
It will have struck the reader that two corresponding elements cross one another in our quaternity schema (shown below). On the one hand we have the polaristic identity of Christ and his adversary, and on the other the unity of the Father unfolded in the multiplicity of the Holy Ghost. The resultant cross is the symbol of the suffering Godhead that redeems mankind. This suffering could not have occurred, nor could it have had any effect at all, had it not been for the existence of a power opposed to God, namely “this world” and its Lord. The quaternity schema recognizes the existence of this power as an undeniable fact by fettering trinitarian thinking to the reality of this world
CW11 ¶ 264Father
Devil
Spirit
The Platonic freedom of the spirit does not make a whole judgment possible: it wrenches the light half of the picture away from the dark half. This freedom is to a large extent a phenomenon of civilization, the lofty preoccupation of that fortunate Athenian whose lot it was not to be born a slave. We can only rise above nature if somebody else carries the weight of the earth for us. What sort of philosophy would Plato have produced had he been his own house-slave? What would the Rabbi Jesus have taught if he had to support a wife and children? If he had had to till the soil in which the bread he broke had grown, and weed the vineyard in which the wine he dispensed had ripened?
CW11 ¶ 264DARK WEIGHT OF EARTH MUST ENTER
INTO PICTURE OF THE WHOLE
The dark weight of the earth must enter into the picture of the whole. In “this world” there is no good without its bad, no day without its night, no summer without its winter. But civilized man can live without the winter, for he can protect himself against the cold; without dirt, for he can wash; without sin, for he can prudently cut himself off from his fellows and thereby avoid many an occasion for evil. He can deem himself good and pure, because hard necessity does not teach him anything better. The natural man, on the other hand, has a wholeness that astonishes one, though there is nothing particularly admirable about it. It is the same old unconsciousness, apathy, and filth
CW11 ¶ 264