Framework

My Morning Star framework expands on these views more fully, but at the core I agree with Jung that Christ is the archetype of the Self—the ultimate archetype. Where I diverge is in how Christ’s shadow is understood. Christ’s shadow is not only Lucifer, but also Dionysus. In a real sense, Dionysus is a mirror of Christ.

Christ represents ground and transfiguration. Lucifer represents knowledge and ambition. Dionysus represents ecstasy and life-affirmation. These are not arbitrary mythic figures for me, but symbolic functions that Christianity has historically failed to integrate.

What I am trying to say, without relying on mythic examples, is that you need a Christian foundation. However, what the Christian foundation in the modern day is lacking is precisely the joy and life-affirmation of the Dionysian, and the knowledge-seeking, ambitious drive associated with Lucifer. Christianity preserved structure and order, but in doing so it repressed life, desire, and intellectual daring.

All three of these—Christ, Lucifer, and Dionysus—are rebellious and disruptive in different ways. They introduce movement, transformation, and risk into existence. By contrast, figures like Yahweh, Satan, and Apollo function as pure forces of order, law, and structure. Order alone cannot sustain a living culture.

What I am arguing is that Christianity needs to re-embrace a love of life, an ambitious pursuit of knowledge, and a willingness to move beyond rigid moralism. This does not mean abandoning Christ, but recovering what has been lost around him: a youthful, chaotic, and creative spirit that refuses stagnation.

Lucifer and Dionysus also represent particular aesthetics—ways of being, creating, and affirming existence—that Christian Europeans once embodied and must recover if they are to survive culturally and spiritually. Without joy, ambition, and creative rebellion, Christianity calcifies. With them, it becomes alive again.