The Seba library treats Fornication in 7 passages, across 4 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Climacus, John, Richard Sorabji).
With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication... a woman drunken with the blood of the saints
Jung deploys the Whore of Babylon imagery from Revelation to illustrate fornication as a collective archetypal symbol of intoxicating, destructive feminine power projected onto the unconscious.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952thesis
the stomach goes off and sends the spirit of fornication against us, saying: 'Get him now! Go after him. When his stomach is full, he will not put up much of a fight.'
Climacus presents fornication as a demonic spirit dispatched in coordination with gluttony, attacking the ascetic precisely when bodily satiation has weakened spiritual resistance.
, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 600thesis
our relentless enemy, the teacher of fornication, whispers that God is lenient and particularly merciful to this passion, since it is so natural
Climacus identifies fornication's demonic teacher as deploying a rhetoric of divine mercy to seduce the ascetic into sin, then switching to a rhetoric of inexorable judgment to provoke despair afterward.
, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 600thesis
the causal connection of thoughts of vanity and fornication... which thoughts start suddenly (fornication, blasphemy, anger)... which can be got rid of in youth (passions of the body: fornication, gluttony)
Sorabji's reconstruction of Evagrius situates fornication within a precise taxonomy of demonic thought-sequences, classifying it as a sudden, body-based passion extinguishable in youth unlike deeper passions of the soul.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
Fornication: causes of, 169, 183; aided by nature, 173; stink of, 176; seriousness of, 176, 177; attacks solitaries, 180; darkens the mind, 185; allied with gluttony, 165, 167, 168, 169
The Ladder's index entry systematically maps fornication's causes, phenomenology, and alliance with gluttony, establishing it as a passion of particular danger to the contemplative life.
, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 600supporting
to drive away the thought of vanity through humility, or that of fornication through chastity, would be a sign of the deepest apatheia
Evagrius, as rendered by Sorabji, identifies the capacity to counter the thought of fornication through chastity — rather than by an opposing demon — as the mark of the highest spiritual freedom.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
the new morality appears to hold that fornication and adultery, as long as it is between consenting adults... is not morally wrong. In fact... the real revolution going on in the individual soul is not so much sexual as it is psychic and symbolic
Hillman reframes contemporary debates about fornication as symptomatic of a deeper psychic and symbolic revolution, arguing that sexuality serves as the outer carrier of an inwardly religious transformation.
, Insearch: Psychology and Religion, 1967thesis