Jeremy Naydler - The Archetype of the Binarius
(This booklet is based on a talk given for the Guild of Pastoral Psychology, London, and recorded at Whichford Pottery on Sep 29th, 2020)
Cover illustration: John Lydgate, *The Hermes Bird*
in Elias Ashmole, ed., *Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum* (1652)
1. The Binarius Archetype and Digital Technology
Digital technology has to a large degree now insinuated itself into the way people think, feel, act and relate to each other. Far from simply being a tool that we use, or a willing servant that we command, we find ourselves increasingly struggling not to become the tool and obedient servant of it. Given its dominance today, it is curious that the binary code on which the digitization of all computer-mediated content is based has not received more attention from depth psychology. If few people think there is anything "archetypal" here to be noted, then the spell-binding influence that digital technology has on our lives is a sure pointer towards its having an archetypal source. Archetypes exercise a powerful effect on us, all the more powerful when we are not conscious of them. If we fail to notice we are within the energy field of an archetype, this is an indication that we are living under its spell.
So little is the archetypal energy behind this technology recognized that there is, as yet, no generally accepted name for this archetype. I propose we call it the Binarius. One of its characteristic features, which may explain why it has slipped under the radar for so long, is that it has been hiding in broad daylight. Because we meet it each day, exteriorized in our computers and smart devices, it seems not to be part of us. It has achieved increasing autonomy within the human world, and has succeeded in presenting itself to us as if it were not something that originated within us and belongs to the inner life of the soul. We should therefore be mindful of Jung's definition of the archetype as "an autonomous factor" in the psyche.(a) If it seems not to belong to us, then that should be regarded as intrinsic to its archetypal signature — a signature it shares with every god, even though it may not be obviously identifiable as any traditional god.
In order to understand better the nature of this peculiarly modern archetype that seems to belong to a different order of spiritual agency than the daimons and gods of old, we need first of all to trace its history. Whereas we tend to look for daimons and gods in the *unconscious mind*, in the world of myth, fairytale and dream, the Binarius by contrast has sought its habitation in the *conscious mind*, and that is why it has proven so difficult to recognise. Immediately we encounter the paradox: it is too close to the functioning of the conscious mind for us to be able to recognise it, and so we remain unconscious of its archetypal status, and the degree to which we have surrendered to it our own autonomy.
(a) C. G. Jung, "Answer to Job" in Psychology and Religion: West and East (CW11), par.758, p.469
2. The Laws of Thought
Ever since Aristotle formulated the Laws of Thought in the 4th century BC, the Binarius has assumed pride of place in the conscious mind, for it was then that the default position of rational thinking, based on a thorough adherence to the rules of logic, became binary. Aristotle's Laws of Thought underpin logical reasoning, and they are three in number.(b)
The first Law of Thought is the *law of identity*: "A thing is what it is and not another thing." The "not" is an important word in this first law, which defines one thing in terms of it *not* being another thing. By defining something in terms of what it is not, the law establishes binary opposition as a principal tool of analysis. This was a radical idea at the time, as we shall see.
This first Law of Thought is backed up by the second law, the *law of contradiction*, which can be stated as follows: "If there are two contradictory statements and one of them is true, then the other one *has* to be false." This law of contradiction requires that we embrace binary, or oppositional thinking in our efforts to orientate ourselves towards truth. If someone says: "That animal is a dog," then the statement precludes asserting at the same time, that it is not a dog. Likewise, if someone says he is late because he missed the bus, then either this is true or false: either he missed it or he didn't miss it. The law of contradiction demands that two contradictory statements cannot both be true: one of them has to be false. This is both how we work out the truth and it is also what most of us would nowadays simply call the application of "common sense."
The irresistible implication of the first two laws is expressed in the third and final Law of Thought: the *law of the excluded middle*,which is that "there cannot be anything between the two parts of a contradiction." There isn't a third option. The dog cannot be both a dog and a not-dog, just as a person cannot both miss and not miss the bus. The "excluded middle" is summed up in the Latin phrase: *tertium non datur*. "The third is not given." It means there is no intermediate position between the opposites. Thus the law of the excluded middle, by disallowing any third possibility, exalts the principle of Twoness.
Something in us seeks unequivocal answers. It underpins our modern sense of truth. That "something" is the Binarius. You can catch sight of it at work within you whenever you look for an unequivocal answer: a Yes or a No, and whenever you deny the validity of an intermediate between them.
By such means is our certainty guaranteed. And yet we know that this binary principle shuts us out of Paradise, as Nicholas of Cusa pointed out, because it confines us to the hard-edged world of Yes or No. For Nicholas of Cusa, the gate of Paradise "is guarded by the highest spirit of reason, and unless it is overpowered, the way will not lie open."(c) The guardian of the gate demands of the human soul that it declares its loyalty to the Binarius, and in this way the guardian ensures we are all strangers to Paradise. Indeed, the guardian of the gate of Paradise could be said to be none other than the Binarius itself. For it is precisely within the domain of the "excluded third," the *tertium non datur*, to which the Binarius seeks to bar our access, that we discover the realm of the gods and spirits, poetry, myth, and the world of the symbolic imagination. Precisely there is *the world of archetypes*, where paradox, ambivalence, and multiple levels of meaning are all vital.
If we identify the Binarius with the "highest spirit of reason," then its role is to try to keep us on the outside of Paradise. The Binarius would appear, therefore, not to be so much an archetype as an anti-archetype! And yet the role of "guardian of the gate" is in itself inescapably archetypal. Just as we encountered the paradox of the Binarius archetype being harboured within the conscious mind in the latter's default mode of functioning rationality, so too is the Binarius entangled in the paradoxical nature of the archetypal realm, in virtue of its anti-archetypal role. For it cannot escape this role of being the *archetype of the "anti-archetype"*. This seeming contradiction it terms actually enables us to see the true archetypal status of the Binarius more clearly, and through raising it to consciousness we can begin to loosen the hold it has on us.
(b) Aristotle, Metaphysics, IV. iii-vii. The Laws of Thought, along with all the main themes of this essay, are discussed more fully in Jeremy Naydler, In the Shadow of the Machine: The Prehistory of the Computer and the Evolution of Consciousness
(c) On the Vision of God ("De Visione Dei", 1453), chap.9, in Nicholas of Cusa, Selected Spiritual Writings, translated by H. Lawrence Bond
3. The Binarius in Antiquity
I first became interested in the Binarius when studying the development of technology in antiquity. In deep antiquity (i.e. in the pre-Greek cultures of, for example, Mesopotamia and Egypt in the third and second Millenium BC), the world was full of gods and spirits, but physical machines were very simple. It was not, like our age, a *technological* age. It was the age of the gods. In Chapter 59 of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, the scribe Ani kneels in front of a sycamore fig, a tree sacred to the goddess Nut, who appears to him in it, and from whom he receives life-sustaining gifts of food and water. (fig. 1) (d)
Figure 1
Ani kneels before a sycamore fig, sacred to the goddess Nut.
Book of the Dead, Chapter 59 (13th Century BC)
E.A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead (1923), p.204
With our modern rational minds we might ask: is Ani relating here to a tree or to the goddess in the tree? According to the First Law of Thought — the Law of Identity — a *tree is a tree and not something else, and definitely not a goddess*. In ancient Egypt, this law had only very limited application. Everyone knew that a tree, a river, or an animal could all be manifestations of gods or spirits. In other words, they could be something other than themselves. People in antiquity generally lived *in the excluded middle*. For them, the tree could be both a tree *and* a goddess.
Because people lived in the sphere of the excluded middle, the use of simple machines, which work according to the principles of applied logic, was alien to the ancient Egyptian religious consciousness. Machines interposed between human beings and the living world of spirits something essentially dead: not just a dead mechanism, but also a kind of deathly consciousness.
The *shaduf* exemplifies how a simple machine embodies the principles of binary logic. It is a long pole with a bucket at one end and a counterweight at the other end, and it swings on a pivot. The counterweight increases the physical force exerted on the load to be raised in the bucket, and this results in what is called a "mechanical advantage." It makes it easier to lift the bucket, and utilizes the basic principle of leverage (fig. 2). What is especially interesting is that the Egyptians knew about the *shaduf* but resisted introducing it into their countryside for a thousand years. They knew about it, because it was being used in Mesopotamia from the middle of the third millenium BC, but they refused to have anything to do with it. The Mesopotamians were far more willing to embrace what we today would call "proto-logical" thinking and simple technologies like the *shaduf*. But such technologies were anathema to the Egyptians, who only adopted the *shaduf* towards the end of the fourteenth century BC, during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten. In many ways a very modern pharaoh, Akhenaten is remembering for devoting his reign to dismantling the old religious traditions and the time-honoured relationship to the gods. Hence, he had no compunction about introducing the *shaduf* to Egypt.
Figure 2
Man and Dog with *shaduf*.
Tombo of Neferhotep (14th century BC)
Author’s drawing
In the *shaduf* we meet the embodiment of the binary thinking that is death to the gods. Swivelling on its pivot are two fundamental logical operations. The first is called *logical disjunction*, which can be expressed as "Either one or the other but not both at the same time." If one end of the pole is up, then the other end must be down: it simply cannot be both: it's either up or down. The second is called *logical conjunction*, which can be expressed as "Both one and the other at the same time." This applies to the bucket and rope attached to the end of the pole, so both bucket and pole go down together. Pole and bucket go up and down together not just because they are connected to each other physically, but also because there is a logical connection between them. It is the logical connections that make machines work just as much as their physical connections.
To operate a machine like this was to step out of the old participatory bond between humans and the gods, for of course in those days rivers were gods just as much as were trees. Th River Nile was the god Hapy. It was never referred to as "the River Nile" in the objectifying way that we refer to rivers today, but was addressed as the god Hapy. There was a personal relationship to it, a relationship to a subject rather than to an object. To interpose a machine in this relationship, even such a simple machine as the *shaduf* was to begin to take a step away from the gods and to begin to carve out a sphere of activity that belonged to the regimen of the Binarius. From our modern point of view, we could say that it was liberating. But from the ancient point of view, it would have seemed sacrilegious, because it took people away from relationship to the gods — hence the hundred years of resistance, before finally the Egyptians succumbed to this ingression of the Binarius into their daily life.
(d) R. O. Faulkner, *The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead*, Chapter 59 (London: British Museum Publications, 1972), p.68. The title of the chapter is "for breathing air and having power over water."
4. Aristotle and the Transcending of the Binarius
The next big step occured a thousand years later when Aristotle imported the laws of mechanics into the inner life of thought so principles, which were the basis of how simple machines like the *shaduf* worked, became the principles with which people regulated their thinking. This was a momentous change because a mode of thinking that had hitherto been applied externally to crafts and technologies now became applied to the interior life, guiding people's thinking about the truth of things, about what is real and not real, and about the nature of the universe. The much celebrated ascendancy of logic and reason in the fifth and fourth centuries BC entailed the Binarius creeping into the human soul, and finding a dwelling place in our inner life of thought. It entailed the Binarius *becoming an arbiter of truth*, as we have seen in the example of Aristotle's Laws of Thought.
It should be said that Aristotle fully understood the inherent limitations of logical thinking. He knew that the sphere of morality and ethics, which is really the sphere of soul-work and inner transformation, is governed by the quality of *Threeness* not Twoness. It was Aristotle's great insight to see that to think morally we have always to look for the third position between the opposites.(e) If we were to look at the picture of the *shaduf* as a logical diagram, then the third, excluded, position is the pivot. Aristotle always looks for the pivot, which he calls the *orthos logos* or "Right Principle." It is this that provides us with our moral fulcrum.
For Aristotle, it is the nature of evil to divide itself into two. In this respect our vices are governed by Twoness. SO, for example, the virtue of courage is not, according to him, the opposite of cowardice. Courage holds the pivotal "third position" between cowardice at one extreme, and foolhardiness or recklessness at the other. Thus, the opposite of cowardice is not courage, but recklessness. Courage holds the balance between these two extremes. The same could be said of generosity, which isn't the opposite of meanness. The opposite of meanness is profligacy. Generosity occupies the pivotal place between meanness and profligacy. Likewise, moderation is not the opposite of self-indulgence. The opposite of self-indulgence is insensibility, a kind of anaesthetisation of one's ability to enjoy life. Moderation occupies the third intermediate place between self-indulgence and insensibility. In each case the soul-tendencies of the extremes are reigned in, and their energies co-opted to serve a higher ideal.
We wrongly tend to think of evil as the opposite of good, but that is to fall into the binary trap. For Aristotle, every virtue lives *between* the opposites. So when we really live out of our moral selves, we step beyond everything in us that tends towards the mechanical, and we enter the realm of Threeness, which is the truly human realm. It is the realm of the Ternarius rather than of the Binarius. Aristotle understood that the Binarius influences the tendencies of our soul, towards on the one hand too much fiery and expansive letting go of self, or surrendering too much to desire, and on the other susceptibility to fear. We see, then, that the Binarius does not simply live in the sphere of logic, but is also encountered in the moral sphere, challenginf us to find that faculty within us that is the source of the moral intuition of the *orthos logos*, and whic belongs to the realm of the Ternarius.
(e) The following is based on Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
5. The Binarius and the Principle of Evil
Aristotle's understanding that evil always divides itself in two is not original to him. It goes back to Pythagoras (6thc BC), who regarded Twoness, in Greek, the *Dyad*) as characterising evil. In the Pythagorean tradition, the divine source is symbolised by the number One, the *Monad*. The *Monad* is God and the good. But the *Monad* is not strictly speaking a number, because it exists before plurality and difference. It represents unity rather than the number one. Multiplicity only enters the universe with the *Dyad.* That is why the *Monad* can't be opposed to evil, because it belongs to a completely different level of being.
For Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, the *Dyad* symbolises difference and otherness. It symbolises the Alien, or that which is at variance with the One. Many ancient authors viewed the *Dyad* as the principle of division and strife. It was also understood to be the principle of materiality, for the physical world is characterised by one thing being different from another. The ancient doxographer, Aetius, tells us:
"Of the principles, Pythagoras said that the *Monad* was God and the good, the true nature of the One, Mind itself; but the indefinite *Dyad* is a daimon and evil, concerned with material plurality."(f)
There is a tradition that Pythagoras spent many years in Egypt, and his teaching was regarded by the Greeks as rooted in Egyptian wisdom.(g) So we need briefly to turn back to Egypt again. In ancient Egypt, division and strife were primarily associated with the god Seth, who is often shown as a strange dog-like creature with a long nose and erect, flat-topped ears. Seth was a god who stood against the order of things. He is best known for murdering Osiris, and cutting him into pieces. In this role especially, Seth embodies the principle of division and fragmentation, and could be understood as an early manifestation of the Binarius.
Two hieroglyphs denoting Seth illustrate this principle of division (fig. 3). Both are somewhat hard to identify, but one is thought to be some kind of cutting implement, which is divided at the bottom. As a hieroglyph, it carries the meaning of "separation" or "severance." The second hieroglyph is of the long-nosed dog and is one of the standard hieroglyphs signifying Seth. Again, there is uncertainty about this hieroglyph too, as it is not any readily identifiable kind of dog. It is rather a semi-mythical creature depicted with a forked tail, which quite possibly indicates the binary nature of the god.
Figure 3
Two hieroglyphs denoting Seth
Author’s drawing
We will probably never know for sure whether the Pythagorean metaphysical understanding of numbers and their symbolism derived from ancient Egypt, but we can be fairly certain that it passed into the medieval world through such sources as Plato's *Timaeus*, Boethius' treatise on arithmetic, *De Institutione Arithmetica*, and Macrobius' *Commentary on the Dream of Scipio*. The Pythagorean tenor of Macrobius' teaching, for example, is evident in his understanding of the One as representing an entity in which all opposites are united, and as "the beginning and ending of all things." It is therefore not a number. For Macrobius, Two is the first number, and through it separation and division begin.(h) Two represents matter, change and corruption. As Jung explains, in his discussion of this passage in Macrobius:
"With the appearance of the number two, *another* appears alongside the one, a happening so striking that in many languages "the other" and "the second" are expressed by the same word... The "other" can have a "sinister" significance — one feels it, at least, as something opposite and alien."(i)
The ancient Egyptians felt this alien quality of the Binarius in Seth, who was always the outsider god. But, in the Middle Ages, the power of the Binarius would be felt in a different way as it took up its place within the world of scholastic learning and in the art of disputation.
(f) Aetius, 1.7.18 in W. K. C. Guthrie, *History of Greek Philosophy*, vol. 1 (Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 248. This view is echoed by many other ancient commentators, such as Porphyry, Philo and Plutarch, as well as overtly neo-Pythagorean thinkers, for which see John Dillon, *The Middle Platonists*. See also Charles H. Kahn, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History.
(g) The tradition of Pythagoras' sojourn in Egypt goes back to Isocrates, Busiris, 28 and Herodotus, Histories, 2.81, and is elaborated in the later accounts of his life given by Iamblichus, Porphyry and Diogenes Laertius.
(h) Macrobius, *Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, 1.6.8, translated by W. H. Stahl (Columbia University Press, 1990), p.103. Macrobiu lived during the first half of the fifth century AD.
(i) C. G. Jung, "A psychological Approach to the Trinity" in *Psychology and Religion: West and East*, par.180. C.W. 11, trans. R. F. C. Hull (Routledge, 1958), p.118
6. Dialectica and the Binarius
The process of logical analysis was referred to by the ancient Greeks as *dialektike*. The *dia* means "twice" or "double" or "divided down the middle." It is linked to the verb *legein*, which means "to speak" but also "to reckon." So the meaning is literally to speak, argue or reckon through the process of dividing. In the Middle Ages *dialektike* became *Dialectica*, one of the seven Liberal Arts, who were all represented as matronly women. The seven Liberal Arts were the very foundation of the medieval educational curriculum, and the study of dialectic (the art of disputation), based on mastery of logic, was one of the core subjects.
It is interesting to find that portrayals of Dialectica in the Middle Ages sometimes show her holding a dog's head. It is hard to know exactly where this association came from. Could it be the dog of Seth appearing once again in a somewhat different disguise? The association of logical thinking with the dog goes back to the Stoic philosopher, Chrysippus (3rd century BC.) According to the philosopher Sextus Empiricus (2nd-3rd c AD), it was Chrysippus who first argued that dogs think logically when chasing prey. When giving chase, if a dog comes to three tracks that the prey could have gone down, it sniffs two and if it finds no scent, then it logically deduces that the prey will have gone down the third track and does not waste time sniffing again: it simply races down the third track.(j) Thus, through taking into account only the two, logical deduction eliminates the need to ponder the third. Interestingly, Thomas Aquinas repeats the same story in his *Summa Theologica* (1.2ae, XIII, art.2, 3.)
A detail from a late twelfth century manuscript shows Dialectica with the dog's head in her left hand (fig. 4). The words spoken by Dialectica in a semi-circle above her are: "My argument follows rapidly like the barks of a dog." One would probably be right to assume the dog's barking is not a friendly greeting. There is a suggestion here that there is a dark shadow to the brightness of logical thinking.
Figure 4
Dialectica holds a dog’s head
Herrad of Landsberg,
*Hortus Deliciarum* (12th century)
This becomes more apparent in other more common depictions of Dialectica, in which she is portrayed holding a large and threatening snake. In a typical illustration, Dialectica holds in her right hand a kind of floral sceptre or "tree" of logical categories, which symbolize the logical ordering of the world as a hierarchical sequence of genera and species. In her left hand, instead of a dog she holds a large and dangerous-looking snake that seems to have tied itself in knots (fig. 5). The image belongs to a long iconographical tradition, going back to the 5th century when Martianus Capella set out the iconography of the Liberal Arts in his book *The Marriage of Philosophy and Mercury*. In his description, Dialectica holds in one hand wax tablets inscribed with patterns of thought "adorned with the beauty of contrasting colour," which presumably adds to their attractiveness. The patterns of thought promise to give an explanation of the world, and the underlying reason for their attractiveness is that they seem to offer the key to understanding (sometimes she actually holds a key).But behind these patterns of thought there is a hook, which is the unsuspecting philosophy student can't see because it is concealed.
Figure 5
Dialectica with snake and floral sceptre
12th century French manuscript of Boethius’ Commentary
on Porphyry’s *Isagoge*. Darmstadt Landesbibliothek
According to Martianus Capella, the budding philosopher is drawn to the thought patterns, but then gets hooked, and is dragged towards the poisonous coils of the snake, normally hidden within the left-hand sleeve of Dialectica's garment. From this sleeve, the snake suddenly emerges, to ferociously bite and then entangle its victim, who is forced to submit to its will. This image vividly conveys the experience of someone innocent of logic being confronted by a debater who has mastered the art of thinking logically. Through dialectic, medieval students of philosophy were exposed to a power, which in ancient Egyptian times was still largely latent, and against which the soul innocent of a training in logic is unable to defend itself. It can only save itself by learning to master logic and employ its strength in the service of soul and spirit.
In his detailed description of Dialectica, Martianus Capella was in fact giving a first, tentative characterisation of the Binarius. The Binarius presents itself as "adorned with beauty" and exercises a power of attraction over the soul, which is strongly drawn towards it. But then the soul encounters something quite different — something utterly cold and inhuman — which captures it in a vice-like grip. At first, the Binarius offers the seductive prospect of bestowing greater knowledge and understanding, but in reality all it has to offer is, at best, skill in logical thinking and in the art of disputation. While these skills may be put to good use in the pursuit of truth, they are in themselves sterile, and an over-emphasis on them serves only to cut us off from the foundation of living spiritual wisdom, and from our moral intuition of the *orthos logos*, drawing us instead into the fruitless labyrinth of oppositional thinking. This is why, to the visionary eye, the Binarius has a serpentine form. Snakes have forked tongues, and so the snake is a natural symbol of duality, with a long association with the principle of evil the Judaeo[/Egypto]-Christian tradition, deriving from the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
In some old manuscripts, the duality of the serpent in the garden is indicated by giving it two heads. Adam and Eve have here fallen victim to the attractiveness of the fruit, and the cunning arguments of the serpent. Having been convinced that to eat of the tree would entail becoming like gods, and knowing the opposites of Good and Evil, they have in fact fallen into the trap of a false dichotomy. As Aristotle knew, Good is not the opposite of Evil, so they actually miss perceiving the third mediating principle where the Good truly resides. Adam and Even are caught in duality, while the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil between them is often portrayed as dividing into three, clearly manifesting a threefoldness, to which they are oblivious (fig. 6).
Figure 6
Adam and Eve with two-headed serpent
*Biblia cum Figuris*, reproduced in J. Charles Wall,
*Devils: Their Origin and History (1904), p.67
(j) Sextus Empiricus, *Outlines of Pyrrhonism*, 1.69-70 (Harvard University Press, 1933), p. 43.
7. Gerhard Dorn and the Myth of the Binarius
One of the fullest characterisations of the Binarius is provided by the German alchemist, Gerhard Dorn. During the 1570s and 80's, at the beginning of the dissolution of medieval culture and the beginning of the modern age, Dorn wrote a series of treatises on the Binarius. It was as if he caught sight of it behind the new world order which was beginning to emerge with the mechanistic philosophy, championed by early 17th century thinkers like Bacon (of whom he was a contemporary), as well as Descartes and Mersenne (both of whom were born at around the time of Dorn's death, the exact date of which is not known). Living in the late 16th century, Dorn had a prophetic sense of the further incursion of the Binarius into human soul-life, and he sought to articulate the nature of this new threat that he sensed was already taking hold of the soul.(k)
According to Dorn, the Binarius originated on the second day of creation, when God separated the upper waters from the lowest, thereby introducing duality into the cosmos. Dorn points out that, in the Book of Genesis, on the evening of each day of creation God is recorded a saying that what he has done is good — again and again the phrase is repeated "And God saw that it was good." These words are spoken after he created the light, after he created heaven and earth, after he created the stars in the sky, the plants and the animals. But on the second day, when he divided the upper from the lower waters, God doesn't say that what he saw he had done was good. According to Dorn this is because on the second day, confusion, division and strife entered the world.
Dorn was in fact reiterating a view already stated by earlier authors, in particular Trithemius of Sponheim (1462-1516) and Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535).(l) But they were actually drawing on much earlier traditions going back to Neoplatonists like Porphyry, Philo and Plutarch and putting them into a Judaeo[/Egypto]-Christian context. Ultimately the source goes back to Pythagoras who, as we saw, was probably influenced by the earlier Egyptian wisdom tradition. Agrippa actually quotes St. Jerome in the following statement regarding the number Two, which Dorn was evidently influenced by when he made his observations concerning the second day of creation:
"This [i.e. the number Two] is also sometimes the number of discord, and confusion, of misfortune, and uncleanness, which is why Saint Jerome in his book *Adversum Jovinianum* ("Against Jovinianus") said that for this reason 'and God said, that it was good, was not spoken on the second day of the creation of the world, because the number Two is evil."
What Dorn sees in his prophetic vision, he pictures in geometrical terms. He pictures the Monad or Unarius as a point. Since a point has no dimensions, it symbolizes the originating divine source of creation. From this point, a line extends outwards to form the radius of a circle, the circumference of which is drawn around the point. The radius line is the Two emanating from, or departing from, the One (fig. 7). Thus the Binarius separates itself from God. The circle symbolises the cosmos created by God, and also the Primal Human Being (Adam). It represents the Ternarius, the perfect image of the divine in creation, in constant movement, turning forever around the center point.
Figure 7
The radius of the circle as the Two emanating from the One,
according to Gerhard Dorn. Author’s drawing.
Dorn understood that, like all of nature, the natural movement of the soul is not in a straight line but in a circle: the soul circles around its own center, which is the source of its being, unless of course it has become thrown off centre. This is an old teaching, which Dorn might have read in Boethius. Boethius wrote:
"Whoever seeks out the truth with deep thought, and wants to avoid being deceived, must turn the light of their mind's eye within, and bring their soul to lodge in the treasure-house at its centre."(m)
The image of the circumambulation of the soul around its centre is important because it gives us a clue as to how to break the spell of the Binarius. This clue we shall follow up later.
According to Dorn, because the Binarius doesn't belong either to the realm of the One or to the realm of the Three, it tries to create its own rival universe, bending itself round in imitation of the Ternarius. But it cannot do it! It becomes a serpentine form, a snake with two heads and four horns. According to Dorn, its four horns symbolise the four salient characteristics of the Binarius: Ambition, Deceitfulness, Lack of Feeling (or Brutality), and Separation from the Divine. This snake-Binarius is full of envy for the circumference of the circle, the Ternarius, whose highest representative is the human being (fig. 8).
Figure 8
The origin of the Binarius as double-headed serpent.
Author’s drawing.
And now the double-headed serpent launches its attack on humankind. According to Dorn, this two-headed serpent approaches Eve and crawls into the "integral mind" of the human being with "deceptive and cunning questions." So *the mind* becomes infected by binary thinking. In Dorn's understanding the motivation for this attack is bound up with the Binarius' desire to set up a rival universe to that of God, a universe that is "contra-natural" (*contra naturam*). The implication is that it is through the human being that the Binarius will bring this rival universe into existence. In Dorn's version of the Temptation of Adam and Eve and the Expulsion from Paradise, this blame falls squarely on the Binarius, who cast its spell of Twoness on the innocent human soul, which had no defense against its compelling logic. Thus humanity's fall from Paradise is due to our succumbing to this alien influence or, one might equally say, the influence of the Alien. And having so succumbed, humanity is enlisted as the instrument of the Binarius's dream of setting up a rival universe to that of God and nature.
Dorn himself represents the twofold serpent with four horns as another geometrical figure. It shows two interlocking semi-circles, suggestive of the falling apart of the original unity of the circle into a duality of two incomplete circles, unable to unite, and sundered into a fourfoldness that lacks any centre (fig. 9). The Binarius lacks a centre because its nature is "to push unity and the centre of truth towards the multiplicity of number." For Dorn, it is only through the rejection of the Binarius that the Ternarius can reunite with the Unarius.
Figure 9
The Binarius represented by two semi-circles without a centre.
Author’s drawing, after Gerhard Dorn, *The Monarchy of the Ternary*
(k) The spiritual biography of the Binarius that follows is based on Dorn's *De Tenebris Contra Naturam* ("Of Darkness Against Nature"), *De Spagirico Artificio Johannes Trithemii Sententia* ("On the Propositions of Johannes Trithemius concerning the Spagyric Art") and *De Duello Animi cum Corpore* ("Of the Conflict of the Soul and the Body") reproduced in Lazarus Zetzner (ed,), *Theatrum Chemicum* (Urseilis, 1659), volume 1. All three treatises have been translated by Paul Ferguson in 2014, and are available online at http://independent.academia.edu/PaulFerguson2. A further short but visually important treatise is Dorn's *The Monarchy of the Ternary in Union Versus the Monomachia of the Dyad in Confusion*, translated from the French by Daniel Willens in *Alexandria 2* (1993), pp.214-231. For a brief summary of Dorn's spiritual biography of the Binarius, see C. G. Jung, "Psychology and Religion: West and East", C.W. 11, trans. R. F. C. Hull (Routledge, 1958), p.60, n.47.
(l) For Trithemius, see C. H. Josten, "*A Translation of John Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica* (Antwerp, 1564), with an Introduction and Annotations," who discusses a letter from Trithemius in which he outlines the relationship of the Binarius, Ternarius and the Unarius. The contents of this letter are reproduced in Henry Cornelius Agrippa, *Three Books of Occult Philosophy* ("De Occulta"), I, 4, edited and translated by Donald Tyson (Llwellyn Publications, 1993), p.11.
(m) Boethius, *The Consolation of Philosophy*, 3.11, poem. See also Plotinus, "On the Good or the One," Enneads, VI.9.8:
"The soul's natural movement is not in a straight line, unless it has undergone some deviation. Its natural movement is in a circle around something interior, around a centre. For the centre is that from which the circle, that is the soul, proceeds. The soul will therefore move around the centre, and bringing itself into accord with it, she will attach herself to it, as indeed all souls should."
8. Leibniz as Servant of the Binarius
At the time Dorn was writing, it would have been hard to conceive how the principle of Twoness could create its own world. But already Francis Bacon had an inkling of it, when he invented his "biliteral alphabet" made up entirely of just the two letters of *a* and *b*. Brought together in different combinations of groups of five, from these two letters alone the whole alphabet could be reproduced, and thus the biliteral alphabet formed a secret code.(n) The binary code was then further elaborated about 100 years after Dorn's treatises, in the 1670s, when Leibniz worked out the basic principles of binary arithmetic. By this time the mechanistic philosophy had become well established, and Leibniz's mathematical contribution was an important next step in the unfolding biography of the Binarius. Just as Bacon saw that it was possible to reduce all the letters of the alphabet to combinations of just two letters, so Leibniz saw that it was possible to reduce all numbers to just two values — a zero and one, so that their qualitative attributes were stripped away.
In 1697, Leibniz incorporated his new binary system within the design of a medallion, in the centre of which he placed a double column of numbers, each subdivided into two further columns (fig. 10). The left hand side of the two main columns gives the binary equivalent of the numbers we are used to using in our decimal system, which are placed in each of the right-hand columns. Beginning on the top left, Zero in binary is the same as Zero in ordinary numerals opposite it. The same applies to the One beneath it. But when we get to the number Two, we have the bifurcation of the binary code into a One and a Zero. It is thus with the number Two that the binary system becomes manifest, utilizing two numerals with opposite meanings: Something and Nothing, or Yes and No. When we arrive at the number Three, we see the binary principle in action, capturing the Three and reducing it to two ones. Here, then, is the triumph of the Binarius over the Ternarius, as Threeness is subjugated to the principle of Twoness. As the numerals proceed from this point, we see every number reduced in the same way to varying combinations of ones and zeros.
Figure 10
Leibniz’s medallion celebrating the Binarius,
designed for Duke Rudolf August (1734)
What especially interested Leibniz was the possibility of using the binary system in mechanical calculations, which had been invented about 30 years before he invented the binary code. It was because the binary code reduces numbers to just two options that he saw it was particularly well suited for programming machines. Leibniz envisaged using small round balls moving through tubes and containers, into which holes would be drilled at certain points, which could then be uncovered or covered. The holes would, in other words, be in one of two states: *open or closed*. In this way, the balls could be removed or redirected, held, or left to roll undisturbed.(o) Leibniz saw that the binary system can operate as a control system, for it has a particular affinity with the way machines function. Of all arithmetical systems, the binary can most effectively be put into action into a purely mathematical way.
But the possibility of constructing a machine controlled by a binary code was only part of Leibniz's vision. The greater remit of Leibniz's medallion was to illustrate his belief that the binary code contains the secret of creation. Therefore it can be utilized to create a universe. Underneath the tables of numbers are the words *Imago Creationis*: "Image of Creation." In a semi-circle at the top is written *Omnibus ex nihilo ducendis sufficit unum*: "To draw out all things from nothing, unity suffices." What Leibniz means is that the number one and a zero is all you need, i.e. a "yes" and a "no" or an "on" and an "off." It is not actually unity, therefore, which suffices. The whole message of the medallion is that it is rather *duality* which suffices. For thereby Twoness can create a world.
The cosmic pretensions of the Binarius are indicated by the rays of sunlight shining from the summit of the medallion. As if deliberately undermining the basis of Pythagorean number metaphysics, in which the One is the origin and source of all creation, Leibniz effectively equates the One with the Void, symbolised by Zero, which is in itself impotent. For rather than creation unfolding out of the plenitude of the One alone, it is the action of a second principle upon the Void that causes the creation to emerge. This second principle is the God of Reason, symbolised by the sun and represented by the number *1*, which shines into the dark abyss of the Void, represented by *0*. Through this interaction, the binary code then manifests out of the dark abyss of night, illumined in a flood of rationalist sunlight. The contrasting areas of light and dark on the medallion reinforces the message of the creative potency not of the One but of the Two, i.e. of duality. Thereby Leibniz provides exactly the vindication of the Binarius's Cosmic ambitions which Dorn had foreseen.(p)
The curious combination of mystical theology and mechanistic thinking reveals the extend to which Leibniz came under the spell of the Binarius. If, for Dorn, the Binarius assumed a central place in his creation theology as the origin of evil, then we find no equivalent moral dimension in Leibniz's creation theology. For Leibniz, the Binarius is no less than God at work in the universe, which by the end of the seventeenth century was understood to be nothing more than a vast machine. Just where Dorn, the pious alchemist, saw in the Binarius an image of the dualistic devil to be rejected, because the Ternarius is the true foundation of the human soul's return to God, so Leibniz, the pious rationalist, by elevating the Binarius to the status of an image of God's activity in creation, allowed no place at all for the Ternarius. Because the world of nature had been consigned to the machine and was viewed merely as a mechanism, it was possible for Leibniz to exalt the Binarius in this way. Ignoring the age-old tradition of the association of Twoness with division, strife and evil, he bestowed upon it a new positive gloss that prepared the way for the future.
(n) Francis Bacon, *De Augmentis Scientiarum* (1620), Book 6, in James Spedding, et al., eds., *The Works of Francis Bacon, vol. 1, pp. 660-661.
(o) Leibniz, *De Progressione Dyadica* in F. L. Bauer, *Origins and Foundations of Computing* (Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2010), p.15
(p) See Florian Cajori, "Leibniz's 'Image of Creation'" in *The Monist*, 26.4 (1916).
9. The Binarius Attains a Physical Vehicle
In his essay, "The Archetype in Dream Symbolism," Jung wrote:
"One can perceive the specific energy of the archetypes when one experiences the peculiar feeling of numinosity that accompanies them — the fascination or spell that emanates from them. This is also characteristic of personal complexes... But while personal complexes never produce more than a personal bias, archetypes create myths, religions, and philosophical ideas that influence and set their stamp on whole nations and epochs."(q)
In Leibniz, who was one of the leading intellectuals of his age, we see an example of an individual who fell under the spell of the archetype of the Binarius. From the age of twenty, when he published his seminal essay on "The Art of Combination" (1666) to the very last month of his life in 1716, Leibniz was drawn again and again to the Binarius. He was so enamoured of this archetype that he theologised the Binarius, raising it to the status of the creative principle that gives rise to the universe. At the same time he never let go of his idea of making a binary calculating machine, which would give the Binarius a form of physical embodiment.
It is a feature of archetypes to seek physical manifestation, and the human impulse to embody them (for example in statues and other works of art) may be understood as a response to a corresponding wish in the archetypes themselves to achieve some form of physical presence. But for the Binarius, a work of art would not be sufficient to fulfil this wish for embodiment: only a machine would do. Here again we see the duplex nature of the Binarius. On the one hand it incites a mystical sense of adulation, and on the other hand it seeks embodiment in the cold machine. And it would need to be no ordinary machine: only a machine that was intelligent would fulfil its ambitious requirements.
That the Binarius has set its stamp upon our present epoch must be obvious to all those who understand the basics of how computers work. The logic circuits used in computers, which employ a series of switches (equivalent to Leibniz's holes that are either open or closed) arranged in different ways so that electric currents can be used to process information, enables the peculiar intelligence of the Binarius to become operative in physical machines. The computer with its myriad electrical switches, pulsing on and off with extreme rapidity, and without reference to either conscience or regard for truth (in its highest sense as a revealing of the nature of the real), frees logic from the constrains that the morally and spiritually mature human soul imposes upon it. Thereby it becomes possible for the Binarius archetype to satisfy its desire to become an autonomous player in the physical world as an amoral intelligence that seeks to construct its own alternative cosmos.
Through the "logic circuits" used in computers, what human beings normally have to work out through the conscious application of thought can take place in a computer without any conscious effort. It is a kind of thinking activity, but unlike the thinking of human beings, it is without consciousness or conscience. Logic is here completely divorced from the pursuit of beauty, truth or goodness, to which it is harnessed when human beings approach nature with reverent understanding, seek out truth with rigorous honesty, or seek to temper their desires, intentions and actions with ethical awareness. In the logic circuit, the thought process has become thoroughly dehumanized. As such it can be conscripted to serve the greater ambition of the Binarius, so clearly perceived in Gerhard Dorn's prophetic vision, of creating an entirely non-natural world. By means of such logic circuits, it is possible to select colours, shapes, sounds and movements. Worlds can be created that have the appearance of being real, but which are in fact simulations of reality. The reason why these simulated or "virtual" worlds exercise such a powerful fascination for us is not just because they are the product of hypnotic electric pulses. It is because they are the product of an archetype — an archetype with creative pretensions, formost of which is to rival God's creation of the universe.
(q) C. G. Jung, "The Archetype in Dream Symbolism" in *The Symbolic Life*, par. 547. CW 18, p. 238.
10. Breaking the Spell
According to Dorn, it is the ambition of the Binarius to create an alternative world that is both against God and nature (*contra Deum et naturam*). The more people give their loyalty to this anti-world of the Binarius, and in the process give up on the natural God-given world, the more they are likely to lose themselves. The archetypal psychologist Robert Sardello refers to this alternative world of the Binarius as a "counter creation," by which he means that it is neither true sense-experience nor true imagination.(r) Thus we are dislodged from the natural world to which we relate through our senses, just as we are dislocated from the inner worlds of soul and spirit to which we relate through the imagination. In Dorn's terms, we lose our relationship both to the Ternarius (the Creation) and to the Unarius (God), in other words to both the circumference of the circle and to its mystical centre.
For Dorn, the key to breaking the spell of the Binarius archetype is that we relate ourselves with clarity of consciousness, and deliberate intent, to the Ternarius. As we have seen, the Ternarius represents both the Creation and human beings in their original purity as "made in the image and likeness of God." (Book of Genesis, 1.26.) It is the unfailing impulse of nature to be centred upon the divine. But while all of nature cannot help but to circle around the divine, human beings alone have the capacity to deviate and to lose themselves to the extend that they lose their relationship to the centre of the circle. Earlier in this essay we saw that Dorn's view echoed that of Boethius, who urged his readers to bend their wandering thoughts and impulses into a circle around the divine centre.
What Boethius was describing was a meditative practice, which can be applied to different areas of our lives. The contemplative indwelling of nature, for example, can lead to an awareness of the all-pervasive divine wisdom revealed in the beauty that everywhere surrounds us if we but open our eyes to it. By giving our loving attention to the phenomena of nature through the hours of the day and seasons of the year, we harmonise ourselves with the Ternarius, and learn to revolve with nature around the divine creative source.
Likewise, in the cultivation of the inner life of imaginative contemplation, we can step beyond the dualistic world of binary logic into "the excluded middle" from which the Binarius, as guardian of the Gate of Paradise, tries to keep us. Within this realm of the excluded middle is the world of symbols and symbolic images that are intrinsically non-binary, and which have the power to unite what is apparently contradictory and opposed. The symbolic image is the language of the archetypal world, and has the capacity — if we give it sufficient attention — to open up deeper levels of meaning and truth. Thus it can be an aid to circumambulation of our thoughts and impulses around the centre.
A third area in which this mediatative practice can be applied concerns the problem of opposites encountered in the course of life, when we are confronted with choices (or tendencies within us) that pull us in opposite directions. Jung held that the resulting inner conflict must be understood as pre-eminently a moral problem that cannot be "solved" purely logically or through the application of discursive reason. We need consciously to suffer the tectonic pull of the opposites, while attending diligently to what lives within our conscience until the reconciling and transcending principle shows itself. Just as Aristotle pointed to the intuition of the pivotal *orthos logos* or Right Principle as the key to overcoming the opposites, so Jung admonished us to seek the "supraordinate third" that alone can absorb to itself the energies that are polarised in apparently irreconcilable division.(s) So this is another way of relating ourselves to the "third that is not given," or *tertium non datur*, which involves orienting towards the centre, and thereby escaping the tendency towards dualistic thinking in our moral life.
The soul's circumambulation thus leads us into a deeper participation in the Ternarius, so that we may better orient ourselves to the Unarius, and free ourselves from the regim of the Binarius. In the practice of cirumambulation, we can recover our sense of wonder at the beauty that everywhere surrounds us in nature, cultivate an awareness of a more profound order of truth expressed in the symbolic image, and direct our consciousness towards the enduring good that saves us from becoming lost in the moral hinterland of the warring opposites. Thereby, we become more open to the possibility of inner guidance from the world of spirit that both emanates from, and draws us towards, the numinous centre.
(r) Robert Sardello, *Love and the World* (Lindsifarne Books), pp. 125-129
(s) C. G. Jung, *Aion*, par.281. CW 9ii, p.180
thanks for these thoughts. Specifically, I now have a feeling that the concept that
"If we identify the Binarius with the "highest spirit of reason," then its role is to try to keep us on the outside of Paradise"
is somehow strictly related to the "Religion rebooted is not innovation" part of this piece of mine about the fake nature of much digital innovation: https://mfioretti.substack.com/p/few-things-look-obsolete-like-innovation