Cross as Coniunctio vs Cross as Pathologizing

The Lineage holds two readings of the crucifixion that do not resolve into one. Edinger, extending Jung‘s Aion, reads the cross as the coniunctio of opposites in which the ego is “nailed to the mandala-cross representing the Self” and the Anthropos is born from the suspension (The Christian Archetype; Aion, par. 79). The image is teleological: the passio is the form through which the Self is constituted.

Hillman, in Re-Visioning Psychology, reads the same image with the teleology removed. The crucifixion is the West’s central image of pathologizing — the form in which soul-suffering is contained and reduced to the single meaning of passio (Re-Visioning Psychology, p. 71). There is no cure of pathologizing, “there is, instead, a re-evaluation” (Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account).

The two readings sit on the same axis as Hillman’s broader departure from Jung on closure and meaning. They do not contradict; they name what is the case from inside the image (Edinger) and what is the case from inside the soul that bears it (Hillman). ratio-crucis is the proposed Peterson-formulated term that holds both faces — the cross as coniunctio and the cross as passio — under one structural principle, and reserves the question of teleology for the soul that stands under it.

Sources

• edward-edinger: the cross is the coniunctio of opposites in which the ego is suspended on the mandala-Self
• carl-jung: the cross is “unmistakably a quaternity” symbolizing “God’s suffering in his immediate encounter with the world” (Psychology and Religion, par. 250)
• james-hillman: the cross is the central image through which the West contains its pathologizing as passio; there is no cure, only re-evaluation
• cody-peterson: the Middle-Voice peisomai is the grammatical key — holding the opposites without mastery or collapse