Abraxas occupies a singular and irreducible position within the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as a cosmological principle, an archetypal image, and a psychological operator. Jung’s primary articulation appears in the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos (1916), subsequently elaborated in the Red Book, where Abraxas is positioned above both God and Devil as the coincidentia oppositorum in its most radical form — ‘improbable probability, unreal reality,’ the force of pure effect undivided by moral polarity. Hoeller’s extended commentary in The Gnostic Jung situates this usage within the Basilidean Gnostic lineage, tracing the figure’s iconographic history on amulets and its numerological identification with the 365-day year. The central tension in the corpus runs between two readings: Abraxas as supreme transpersonal deity transcending all differentiation, and Abraxas as psychic energy itself — the raw, amoral dynamism of the unconscious demanding integration rather than worship or avoidance. A secondary tension concerns the relationship between Jung’s Abraxas and that of Hermann Hesse in Demian, with Hoeller suggesting both men independently encountered the same newly constellating archetype. The term thus indexes fundamental debates about evil as metaphysical reality, the relativity of God, individuation’s cost, and the limits of monotheistic framing in depth-psychological thought.
Abraxas standeth above the sun and above the devil. It is improbable probability, unreal reality… It is force, duration, change… Hard to know is the deity of Abraxas. Its power is the greatest, because man perceiveth it not.
Jung’s Sermones define Abraxas as the supreme cosmological principle surpassing both God and Devil, identified with pure undifferentiated efficacy beyond all moral opposition.
, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963thesis
Abraxas, however, is the cosmos; its genesis and its dissolution… He is the mightiest manifest being, and in him creation becomes frightened of itself. He is the revealed protest of creation against the Pleroma and its nothingness.
Hoeller’s rendering of the Third Sermon presents Abraxas as the totality of cosmic process — creation and dissolution united — whose overwhelming power induces existential terror precisely because it refuses all reduction to partial principles.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982thesis
the figure of Abraxas meant more to Jung than all the other powers and mythological figures mentioned in the Seven Sermons… this figure proves Jung’s Gnosis and Gnosticism more clearly than any other item of evidence.
Hoeller argues that Abraxas is the decisive index of Jung’s Gnostic orientation, carrying greater evidential weight than any other symbol in the Sermones for understanding Jung’s relationship to the ancient tradition.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982thesis
To the degree that you live it, you also fall victim to the power of Abraxas and his dreadful deceptions… Pain and disappointment fill the world of Abraxas with coldness, all of your life’s warmth slowly sinks into the depths of your soul.
The Red Book articulates a dialectical ethics of Abraxas: engagement with life necessarily entails subjection to Abraxas’s deceptive power, yet this very suffering redirects libidinal energy toward the individuating star-self.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
Abraxas, as the all-pervading energy of being, is thus the sum of and the liberator from the cycle of necessity, freeing man from the agony of time… The 365 zones of the inner realm… represent the sum total of psychological obstacles which stand in the way of the freedom of the soul.
Hoeller connects the numerological value of Abraxas (365) to a Gnostic soteriology of temporal liberation, reading the figure as both the generator of psychological constraint and the power capable of dissolving it.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982thesis
in his characterization of Abraxas, he is particularly intent upon bringing forth the dynamic, overwhelming power and activity of the cosmic chant
Hoeller distinguishes Jung’s treatment of Abraxas from his earlier account of the Pleroma, noting that the shift from equilibrated opposites to overwhelming dynamic power marks Abraxas as a distinct and more active principle.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting
His dark antithesis in the depths is here designated as Abraxas. He represents the dominus mundi, the lord of the physical world, and is a world-creator of an ambivalent nature.
Jung’s commentary on the Systema Munditotius explicitly identifies Abraxas as the dark cosmological counterpart to Phanes/Erikapaios, positioning him as ambivalent demiurgic lord of the physical world.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
Abraxas can be the fierce leap of the hunting lion at the moment of the kill, and simultaneously the tranquil beauty of a spring morn; he can be love and the slaying of love; he can be Christ, the holy one, as well as Judas, his betrayer.
Hoeller illustrates Abraxas’s paradoxical nature through vivid antithetical images, demonstrating that the figure’s function is precisely to hold irreconcilable psychological polarities in simultaneous tension.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting
Basilides to be under the overlordship of Abraxas, a terrible and overwhelming deity, whose resistless might was invoked in the many representations of his person, engraved upon many talismans and amulets.
Hoeller documents the iconographic and material history of Abraxas in Basilidean Gnosticism, establishing the figure’s pre-Jungian existence as a protective deity whose image was preserved on gem-carved amulets.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting
both Jung and Hesse may have experienced a typically Jungian psychological phenomenon roughly at the same point in time, namely that they met a newly emerging archetype… they both had an encounter with Abraxas, as an autonomous being of great antiquity as well as of contemporary relevance.
Hoeller proposes that the parallel appearances of Abraxas in Jung’s Sermones and Hesse’s Demian reflect a synchronous constellation of an autonomous archetype in the collective unconscious rather than direct literary influence.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting
the rising of the island from the ocean might be ascribed to two forces. The upward movement of the island is first caused by the force of Abraxas, which drives the landmass upward from below, and secondly by a gravitational force which draws from above, that of the shining star of divine meaning.
Hoeller articulates a bipolar model of psychic structure in which Abraxas supplies raw energetic impulsion from below while the divine star-image provides teleological orientation from above, together constituting the axes of individuation.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting
Demian is a thoroughly Gnostic book, as anyone having the least knowledge of Gnosticism can easily discern… Hesse’s statements about Abraxas, which in their interpretation of the Gnostic image are extremely close to the interpretation offered by Jung in the Seven Sermons.
Hoeller establishes Hermann Hesse’s Demian as an independent but convergent Gnostic reading of Abraxas, noting the proximity of Hesse’s literary treatment to Jung’s psychological rendering.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting
the Gnostic symbol Abraxas, a made-up name meaning three hundred and sixty-five… the Gnostics used it as the name of their supreme deity. He was a time god. The philosophy of Bergson, la durée créatrice, is an expression of the same idea.
An editorial note records Jung’s 1932 gloss linking Abraxas to the temporality of creative duration, connecting the ancient Gnostic time-deity to Bergsonian metaphysics and thus grounding the symbol in modern philosophical discourse.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
Abraxas was indeed a high and numinous archetypal figure in at least some forms of Gnosticism… some of the best-known Abraxas amulets contain at their base the word Sabao, a clear reference to the name Sabaoth, meaning hosts.
Hoeller investigates the epigraphic relationship between Abraxas and Sabaoth on surviving amulets, suggesting a possible subordinate or representative function of Sabaoth within Abraxas-centered cosmological hierarchies.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting
No psychological conflict is ever truly resolved when one opposite wins out over the other. Only when the opposites are reconciled on a plane or in a dimension superior to themselves can we say that there has been a real solution.
Hoeller uses the logic of Abraxas — the reconciliation of opposites at a transcendent level — to distinguish Jungian therapeutic method from reductive approaches that privilege one psychic polarity over its counterpart.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting
the First Mystery, the Source of all gods, worlds and men. This is the unknown, all-transcending and all-pervading one whose name — according to Basilides and his modern amanuensis C. G. Jung — is Abraxas.
Hoeller explicitly frames Jung as the modern transmitter of the Basilidean tradition, positioning Abraxas as the apex of a Gnostic soteriological hierarchy that culminates in liberation from the cycles of aeons.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting
whenever we do not resist Abraxas we advance our true liberation.
Hoeller distills a practical ethical corollary from Jung’s Abraxas doctrine: non-resistance to the overwhelming dynamism of the unconscious constitutes the path of psychological liberation rather than bondage.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting
The second means Abraxas. / The third the sun. / The fourth the moon. / The fifth the earth. / The sixth the phallus. / The seventh the stars.
A soul-dialogue from September 1916 establishes Abraxas’s position in a seven-tiered cosmological hierarchy, placing it immediately below the Pleroma and above the Sun, indicating its intermediate yet supreme status among manifest powers.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
Abraxas (barbarous word) Name given by Basilides and after him by other Gnostics to a mythological figure associated with the Jungian of the opposites.
Hoeller’s glossary entry provides a minimal definitional anchor, classifying Abraxas within the category of Gnostic ‘barbarous words’ and linking it explicitly to Jung’s psychology of the opposites.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982aside
God is terror and darkness just as much as he is love and light. How else can one explain Auschwitz, and the torture chambers in Siberia… The Swiss doctor rightly says in this little book that there are countless gods and devils.
A dramatic dialogue in Hoeller’s prologue uses Abraxas’s paradoxical attributes to ground a theodicy capable of accounting for historical evil, invoking the Seven Sermons as theological corrective to conventional monotheism.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982aside