The Seba library treats Outer Darkness in 6 passages, across 5 authors (including Hillman, James, Giegerich, Wolfgang, Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.)).
At the same moment that we light the candle we create ‘outer darkness,’ as if the light were a theft from the penumbra of dawn and twilight, of paradoxical archetypal light.
Hillman argues that outer darkness is not a pre-existing condition but is co-created with ego-consciousness at the very instant illumination occurs, making the polarity of conscious and unconscious structurally simultaneous and mutually generative.
, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis
has not psychology, just as in the Matthew parable, long been in the state of being bound hand and foot and cast into outer darkness? Does the outer darkness not consist in the very fact that psychology takes for real all the beautiful myths and ideas that it has put up before itself as Potemkin villages
Giegerich repurposes the eschatological image to indict depth psychology itself, arguing that its uncritical literalism about its own symbols constitutes the condition of outer darkness — a self-imposed exile from genuine psychological interiority.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis
I have meditated only on the sentence which threatens sinners, on the eternal fire and the outer darkness, on the state of the souls of sinners and of the righteous
The Philokalia presents outer darkness in its classical patristic register as an object of sustained contemplative meditation, functioning as an ascetic discipline that orients the intellect toward divine judgment and away from worldly distraction.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
Devil cast to outer darkness
Peterson’s index situates outer darkness within the broader Jungian analysis of the split God-image, associating it with the fate of the repudiated shadow-aspect — the Devil — when the psyche refuses integration of its darker pole.
, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024supporting
there is no bridge from the ego to the Self. The ego can at best only preach individuation (becoming Self), and we know how helpless preaching is.
Giegerich’s argument about the unbridgeable ego-Self gap provides the structural logic undergirding his use of outer darkness as the condition into which psychology casts itself when it preaches rather than undergoes genuine psychological transformation.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020aside
If a blind person and one who can see are both in darkness, they are the same. When the light comes, one who can see will see the light, and the blind person will stay in darkness.
The Gospel of Philip presents an analogue to outer darkness as a permanent condition of those constitutionally unable to receive light, framing spiritual blindness as an ontological rather than merely moral deficit.
, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus: The Definitive Collection of Mystical Gospels and Secret Books about Jesus of Nazareth, 2005aside