The Power of Wildness in the Times of Dystopia
At least for me, it has been a season for dystopian novels. After finishing Handmaid’s Tale and its sequel The Testaments, I moved on to reread 1984. When a cruel new law was recently passed in Poland...
View ArticleReading The Red Book (31)
“Little good will come to you from outside. What will come to you lies within yourself. But what lies there!” C.G. Jung, The Red Book, chapter XVIII (Liber Secundus) Chapter XVIII of Liber Secundus is...
View ArticleMaster Arnold Böcklin
Arnold Böcklin (born in 1827) was a Swiss symbolist painter, whose work The Plague (1898) has recently emerged as the emblem of our moment in time. It seems that through his symbolist lens he managed...
View ArticleReading The Red Book (32)
Chapter XIX of Liber Secundus (part II of The Red Book) is called The Gift of Magic. The Soul wants Jung to accept the gift of magic represented by “a black rod, formed like a serpent-with two pearls...
View ArticleReading The Red Book (33)
“One can certainly gain outer freedom through powerful actions, but one creates inner freedom only through the symbol.” C.G. Jung, The Red Book, Liber Secundus, chapter XX Chapter XX of Liber Secundus,...
View ArticleGender and the Cosmic Shift
Natural History Museum of Bern, Switzerland is currently running an exhilarating, colourful exhibition called “Queer – Diversity is in our Nature.” The thesis of the curators seems to be that the...
View ArticleThe Sirens as Psychopomps and Muses of the Underworld
I came across this beautiful description of the Sirens in Karl Kerenyi’s Gods of the Greeks (first published in 1951). It seems that far form being the evil seductresses often portrayed in literature,...
View ArticleReading The Red Book (34)
“We need magic to be able to receive or invoke the messenger and the communication of the incomprehensible.” C.G. Jung, The Red Book, Liber Secundus, chapter XXI We have reached the final twenty-first...
View ArticleReading The Red Book (35)
“I have united with the serpent of the beyond. I have accepted everything beyond into myself.” C.G. Jung, The Red Book, Liber Secundus, chapter XXI This is a continuation of the discussion of the final...
View ArticleA Hymn to Plant Life
While listening to a talk of Alan Watts recently, I was struck by one of his observations. He said that in Daoist inspired landscape painting was a statement against anthropocentrism, which sees humans...
View ArticleSymbolism of Mountains
In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, C.G. Jung talks about his childhood dream of going to the Swiss mountains. Owing to the fact that he was born in a poor family his dream came true only in late...
View ArticleThe Sacred Art of Pilgrimage
“May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm on your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again, may God hold you … Continue...
View ArticleReading The Red Book (36)
“The place of your work should be in the vault.” C.G. Jung, The Red Book, Scrutinies We have now reached Scrutinies – the third part of Jung’s Red Book. As Sonu Shamdasani points out in his...
View ArticleThe House of the Black Madonna
One of the most important Black Madonna shrines in Europe is The Basilica della Santa Casa (Basilica of the Holy House) in Loreto, Italy. Catholics believe that it enshrines the authentic house, where...
View ArticleSisyphus and Stone
Stones symbolize that which is ancient, eternal, impenetrable and unconscious. Unsurprisingly, the first chapter of human history was called the Stone Age. For the ancients stones were infused with the...
View ArticleReading The Red Book (37) – Seven Sermons to the Dead
Seven Sermons to the Dead (Septem Sermones ad Mortuos) is a collection of seven Gnostic texts written and privately published by C. G. Jung in 1916, under the title Seven Sermons to the Dead, written...
View ArticleAutumn
Whenever autumn is in full colour, I always remember the alchemical dictum “Nature rejoices in nature, nature conquers nature, nature rules over nature.” In volume 13 of Collected Works, Jung explained...
View ArticleMy Octopus Teacher: the Soul and Her Beloved
I. “It is not necessary that you go out of your house. Remain by your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be completely still and alone. The world will offer itself to...
View ArticleReading The Red Book (38) – Seven Sermons to the Dead
We are making our way through The Seven Sermons to the Dead, which are part of Scrutinies, the final section of The Red Book. In my previous post I looked into the genesis of the sermons while this one...
View ArticleHermopolis: the City of Beautiful Renewal
“Let us praise Thoth, the exact plummet of the balance,from whom evil flees,who accepts him who avoids evil,the Vizier who gives judgement,who vanquishes crime,who recalls all that is forgotten,the...
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