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Between and , C. G. Jung systematically studied Gnostic documents (Jung 21, p. 200), and much of what he learned from these studies emerged later in his own analytical psychology. Yet Jung had been intrigued with Gnosticism even before he began to study it systematically. In , under the pseudonym of the second-century Gnostic writer Basilides, Jung wrote a treatise entitled ‘Septem sermones ad mortuos’ (‘Seven sermons to the dead’) (Jung 17). The structure and content of this treatise clearly show his familiarity with certain Gnostic texts, and also reflect his emerging psychological theories. In this paper I want to determine the Gnostic sources that most strongly influenced Jung in his writing of the ‘Seven sermons’, and how he incorporated these sources into his emerging psychological theories.
To begin with, however, I wish to mention three of the many tangential sources that influenced Jung in the writing of the ‘Seven sermons’. First, Thomas Altizer wrote about the influence of the German Romantics on the notion of the unconscious that Jung was developing during the time he wrote the ‘Seven sermons.’ ‘But it is the German Romantics who are his true fathers. The German Romantics seized upon the unconscious as that interior-imaginative region wherein man can encounter the ideas and images which have been obliterated from consciousness in man's fall from primal unity’ (Altizer 1, p. 305). Second, James Heisig noted the influence of Nietzsche's Thus spake Zarathustra on the writing style Jung used in the ‘Seven sermons’, observing that, ‘there is much to invite comparison with the style of Nietzche's Zarathustra, which had had a considerable impact on Jung’ (Heisig 6, p. 208). Third, Jung himself discussed the importance of Goethe's Faust on his life's work.
Faust struck a chord in me and pierced me through in a way that I could not but regard as personal. Most of all, it awakened in me the problem of opposites; of good and evil, of mind and matter, of light and da