A concept in Jungian analytical psychology which refers broadly to images of totality and wholeness – such as the mandala – that appear in dreams or other spontaneous expressions of the unconscious. Jung believed that the quaternity should serve as the primary image of the God archetype, replacing the Christian trinity which he viewed as psychically obsolescent. The Christian trinity was an inadequate symbol to denote psychic wholeness, Jung contended, as it failed to encompass the shadow and feminine aspects of the psyche. Jung was not clear on which of these two should be accorded priority, arguing for the inclusion of Mephistopheles in the quaternity, as the shadow cast by Christ, while also expressing great enthusiasm for the Catholic Church’s adoption of the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary. This, he maintained, established a quaternity relation as Mary, representative of the eternal feminine, functioned as counterpart to the bridegroom of Christ.
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Jung, C. G. (1958). A psychological approach to the dogma of the trinity. In Psychology and religion: West and east, CW 11. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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Pahucki, J. (2020). Quaternity. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24348-7_553
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