aeons
The term ‘Aeon’ occupies a singular position in the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as cosmological cipher, historical-psychological category, and symbol of the Self’s temporal manifestation. Jung’s monograph Aion (1951) establishes the foundational framework: the Christian aeon, correlated with the two-thousand-year Pisces epoch in precession-of-the-equinoxes astronomy, provides the chronometric container within which the drama of Christ and Antichrist — enantiodromian reversal of psychic dominants — unfolds. The aeon is thus never merely calendrical; it is the objective-psychic field in which archetypal configurations incarnate historically. Von Franz extends this into comparative mythology, tracing the Aztec five successive Suns, the Abbot Joachim of Fiore’s three great aeons, and the Greek Aion-Chronos as vital fluid, establishing that the concept is a cross-cultural attractor for the archetype of time as sacred power. Gnostic sources, mediated principally through Hans Jonas, supply the hierarchical aeon-pleroma: divine emanations constituting the fullness of being, where ‘a perfect Aeon’ exists in nameless pre-beginning. Edinger consolidates the Jungian inheritance, foregrounding the aeon’s implication for what he calls the new God-image — the recognition that the Pisces aeon’s terminus signals a demanded transformation of the collective psychic dominant. Tension persists throughout the corpus between the aeon as objective astronomical-historical fact and as inward, individuation-relevant symbol.
My investigation seeks, with the help of Christian, Gnostic, and alchemical symbols of the self, to throw light on the change of psychic situation within the ‘Christian aeon.’
Jung announces the Aeon as the central organizational concept of Aion, framing the Christian epoch as a two-thousand-year psychic constellation anchored synchronistically to the Pisces age and structured around the Christ/Antichrist enantiodromia.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
Aion originally denoted the vital fluid in living beings, and thus their life span and allotted fate. This fluid continued to exist after death in the form of a snake.
Von Franz recovers the pre-philosophical Greek root of Aion as life-substance and fate-power, showing it was identified with Chronos and the Oceanos-serpent before becoming a cosmological-astrological divinity.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
I had attempted to explain how the appearance of Christ coincided with the beginning of a new aeon, the age of the Fishes. A synchronicity exists between the life of Christ and the objective astronomical event, the entrance of the spring equinox into the sign of Pisces.
Jung retrospectively articulates the core claim of Aion: the birth of Christ is synchronistically correlated with the astronomical inauguration of the Pisces aeon, making astrological periodization a legitimate tool of depth-historical psychology.
, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963thesis
In the Mithraic religion we meet with a strange god, Aion (pl. xLtv), also called Chronos or deus leontocephalus because he is conventionally represented as a lion-headed human figure.
Jung identifies the Mithraic lion-headed god Aion-Chronos as a key iconographic crystallization of the archetype, linking time, solar energy, and serpentine eternity in a single divine image.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952thesis
In invisible and nameless heights there was a perfect Aeon pre-existent. His name is Fore-Beginning, Fore-Father, and Abyss. No thing can comprehend him.
Jonas presents the Valentinian Gnostic pleroma, in which ‘Aeon’ designates the perfect pre-existent divine being whose ineffable repose precedes all emanation — establishing the ontological dignity the term carries in Gnostic cosmology.
, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 1958thesis
These two figures, Christ and Antichrist, were identified, shortly after the beginning of the Christian era, with the two fishes which symbolize the astrological aeon of the Fish (roughly A. D. 1–2000). Thus the symbol of the Self was understood as a symbol in process of transformation during the course of history.
Von Franz consolidates Jung’s Aion argument, demonstrating that the Christ/Antichrist dyad functions as the symbolic expression of the Self undergoing historical transformation across the Pisces aeon.
, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, 1975supporting
The reference is to the astrological conception of the Platonic month, or aeon, of Pisces, which is based on the precession of the equinoxes. Each Platonic month consists of one zodiacal sign, and lasts approximately 2,300 years.
Editorial annotation to the Red Book specifies the technical astronomical definition Jung employed — the precessional Platonic month of roughly 2,300 years — grounding the aeon concept in measurable celestial mechanics.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
One of the most famous creators of such a pattern of Divine Providence in history is the Abbot Gioacchino da Fiori (twelfth century), who announced that history was divided into three great aeons: the period of the Old Testament, which was the time of the Father.
Von Franz positions Joachim of Fiore’s tripartite aeon-scheme alongside other cross-cultural time-periodization systems, demonstrating the archetype’s recurrence in Christian apocalyptic thought as well as Mesoamerican cosmology.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
This led to a linear view of time which unfolds in five successive aeons or Suns. The sun ’4 Tiger’ lasted 676 years; then the people were eaten by ocelots and the sun destroyed.
Von Franz shows that the Aztec cosmological schema of five successive Suns constitutes a non-Western parallel to the Jungian aeon concept, each age ending in catastrophic dissolution before the emergence of a new dominant.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
Ecclesia catholic et protestantes et seclusi in secreto. Aeon finitus. (The Catholic church and the Protestants and those secluded in secret. The end of an aeon.)
Jung’s own caption to his 1928 mandala painting declares ‘the end of an aeon,’ marking the transition from the Pisces epoch as a felt, personally experienced psychic event coincident with the reception of the Golden Flower text.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
They therefore unite in prayer to the Father and obtain from him the emanation of a new pair of Aeons, Christos and Holy Spirit, who have this two-fold office: within the Pleroma to restore true serenity.
Jonas details the Valentinian aeon-hierarchy in which Christos and Holy Spirit are emanated as reparative Aeons, illustrating how individual aeons function as purposive divine hypostases within the pleroma’s self-correction.
, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 1958supporting
How one can exist both in ordinary time and in aeonic time together can best be illustrated by the story of the death of the great Zen Master Ma.
Von Franz introduces ‘aeonic time’ as a phenomenological category distinct from clock time, exemplified through the Zen Master’s dual answer — mortal moon-face and millennial sun-face — to argue that ordinary and archetypal temporalities coexist.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
The concept of time is so abstract and merges so with that of energy that it is difficult to detach, in order to show that time is really meant.
In the Dream Analysis seminars Jung traces the conceptual genealogy of Aion-Chronos as a Neoplatonic deity of energy, fire, and phallic power, noting how time-symbolism elides with cosmogonic force in the Greek religious imagination.
, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984supporting
Aeon: Autopator as, 191 birth from Kore, 104 aeon, Christian, ix
The Aion index entry records the term’s diverse valences within Jung’s own system — Autopator-as-Aeon, birth from Kore, the Christian aeon — confirming the concept’s cross-referential density throughout the work.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951aside
Both documents fall within the critical epoch that opened with the second millennium of the Christian era, about which I shall have more to say in due course.
Jung marks the eleventh century as an astronomically and symbolically critical juncture within the Pisces aeon, linking textual evidence of the antithetical fishes to the astrological conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Gemini at 531 AD.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
We live in the age of the decline of Christianity.
In a 1929 letter Jung frames the contemporary cultural moment as the waning phase of the Christian aeon, contextualizing his engagement with the Chinese Golden Flower text within the broader periodization scheme that Aion would later systematize.
, Letters Volume 1: 1906-1950, 1973aside
We live in the age of the decline of Christianity.
Reprinted in the second Letters volume, this remark sustains the same epochal diagnosis, indicating the aeon framework was operative in Jung’s thinking from the late 1920s through his final decade.
, Letters Volume 2, 1951-1961, 1975aside