Philemon

The name ‘Philemon’ comes from the Greek word for ‘kiss,’ so you would expect this character to represent a feeling function capable of a tender, loving attitude toward the feminine.

Beebe argues that Philemon’s etymological and mythological associations predict a feeling-type figure, but his actual manifestation in The Red Book contradicts this, revealing instead a senex-inflected, limit-setting presence whose ‘chief skill seems to lie in delineating and setting limits.’

Beebe, John, Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness, 2017thesis

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He included the Sermones in this material, and now added Philemon’s commentaries on each sermon. In these, Philemon stressed the compensatory nature of his teaching: he deliberately stressed precisely those conceptions that the dead lacked.

Shamdasani’s editorial note establishes Philemon’s structural and pedagogical role in Liber Tertius: he functions as a compensatory teacher whose pronouncements are deliberately calibrated against the collective spiritual deficit of the dead.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis

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Later, Philemon became relativized by yet another figure, whom I called Ka. In ancient Egypt the ‘King’s Ka’ was his earthly form, the embodied soul.

Jung’s own retrospective account in Memories documents Philemon’s eventual supersession by the figure of Ka, indicating that Philemon occupied a specific and historically bounded stage in Jung’s inner development rather than a permanent or absolute position.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis

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In the Metamorphoses, Ovid tells the tale of Philemon and Baucis. Jupiter and Mercury wandered disguised as mortals, in the hill country of Phyrgia. They searched for somewhere to rest but were barred by a thousand homes.

The editorial apparatus grounds Jung’s choice of the name ‘Philemon’ in Ovid’s myth of the pious couple who welcomed the gods incognito, providing the mythological substrate for understanding the figure’s hospitality toward the divine and the numinous.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting

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In the case of the Septem Sermones, the font coloring has followed Jung’s printed version of 1916.

This editorial note on the typographical conventions of Liber Novus tangentially situates the Septem Sermones — with which Philemon’s commentaries are directly associated — within the material history of the Red Book’s production.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009aside

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Published with the support of the Philemon Foundation. This book is part of the Philemon Series of the Philemon Foundation.

The title page documents the institutional role of the Philemon Foundation in sponsoring the publication of previously unpublished Jung seminars, showing how the name ‘Philemon’ has been extended from an inner figure to an archival and scholarly organization.

Jung, C.G., Dream Interpretation Ancient and Modern: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1941, 2014aside

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