Books I have read (part 1)

It's been years since I started thinking about filming my YouTube videos in English. Then I figured out it is maybe better to stick to my native tongue because that way I can express myself more fully and in greater detail. With writing a blog it is a little bit different. You can invest your time and energy correcting your falsely written sentences in comparison to speaking in a video where you do not have time nor space to constantly correct yourself. The reason why I have started writing in English is the mere fact that I do not live in Croatia anymore and I am starting to meet more and more people with an international background. That is why I figured out it would be more prudent of me to write for a broader audience and to see where this is going to lead me. I will certainly have a significant amount of errors in my writing because English is obviously not my native language, therefore I kindly ask for your patience :) Maybe in a few years I am going to start writing in German, but I guess it is a long road until that point haha.

In this post I would like to share with you the books that I have read in the last 2 years or so. I have dived into the very specific material that it is definitely not mainstream, hence not so popular. But it became a very important part of me, so important that I invest most of my “alone free time” to explore this old, dusty and forgotten territory.

Psychology and Alchemy, Carl Gustav Jung

This is the first book by Jung that I read. It is focusing on the relationship between psychology as a modern science and a very old mediaeval (probably much older) philosophical discipline which puts its main focus on the relationship between a man and a cosmos. There is a lot of talk about the Unconscious and its dimensions, such as Shadow, Anima and Animus. Much was written about the totality of the Self and all those deliciously complicated constructs that Jung formulated and derived out of these old teachings. In this book you will find not only alchemical, but also hermetical and cabalistic teachings. It is all connected in a very deep and strange way. While reading the book you realise that people who wrote these works had a greater and more profound understanding of the cosmos than we do now. So whoever is interested in this, I kindly suggest that you invest your time in this book. It is so detailed and the author’s effort to write this is more than obvious.

Aion, Carl Gustav Jung

After this profound introduction to alchemy, I came across Jung’s book Aion. This is the book for all of you who have an interest in astrology and in which ways astrology is connected to the rise of monotheistic religions. Jung’s focus here is mainly on Christianity and the aeon of Pisces in which we live in right now. Most of you know that the symbol of Jesus Christ is a fish. In one place in the Bible, Christ says: "I am the Alpha and the Omega", but if you know more about astrology, then you would know that those are the important stars in the Pisces constellation. These are all mysteries that Jung is trying to explain and argue in the book. The other interesting fact is that the symbols of Horus’ four sons in Egyptian mythology are: the Ox, the Eagle, the Lion and the Angel. We know today that these symbols also correspond to the four Evangelists. The Angel for Saint Matthew, the Lion for Saint Mark, the Ox for Saint Luke and the Eagle for Saint John. Food for thought!

The Red Book, Carl Gustav Jung

Probably the most special and controversial book by Jung. It is filled with his vivid and rich visions and dreams. While reading the book you will soon become aware that Carl Jung had some kind of a psychic gift. His mother was apparently quite a psychic herself. He had access to certain dimensions that are not available to most of us. At least the majority of us think that way. I read this book in the summer of 2020. Then I quite recently bumped into Jordan Peterson’s podcast with Brian Muraresku and Carl Ruck. It was so interesting and engaging that I have watched it two times. In this podcast, Carl Ruck, who is investigating the Greek tradition of using hallucinogenic mushrooms and their relationship with religious and transcendental experiences, claims that Red Book came out after Jung’s experimentation with these special mushrooms. Allegedly he spent a year in a city of Taos where he experimented with these mushrooms and focused on his work on the Unconscious. Quite a statement, I must say, and something that is worth further investigation. This would definitely explain the special nature of this book.

Because I am very interested in this topic, I bought a book by Brian Muraresku, The Secret History of the Religion with no Name. Looking forward to reading this gem because Brian Muraresku has spent more than a decade writing this book. Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Carl Gustav Jung

Of all the books that I have read by Jung, this one is maybe the easiest to start with. It offers various descriptions of the basic Jungian constructs, such as personal and a collective Unconscious, and of course - Archetypes. Jung takes his time to describe the meaning of Shadow in the human psyche and constructs that go even deeper into the Unconscious - Anima and Animus. He pointed to the slow death of numina in nature (a divine aspect), as well as a slow death of Protestant Church with hundreds of its denominations. There are many talks about the meanings of rituals and importance of religious institutions; what are they doing wrong and what should be done about it. At the end of the book, you shall find many mandala drawings by his own patients. Mandala is a very old way of projecting the totality of the psyche onto the realm of a physical world (e.g. in temples, on the ground or on a piece of paper). It looks like a circle which has various elements inside of it. You can google it to have a better picture of it.

This was part 1 of this blog post and a short review on each book. Hopefully I was making sense in my writing and made you curious about certain topics. Because of the fair size of Jung’s opus, many people have a tendency to pick only one field of interest and neglect the others. My advice to you, if you are interested in Jung, is to have a grasp of each, because only then you have a broader understanding of the importance of Jung, not only for modern psychology, but also for today's modern thought.

Till the next time, be safe dear fellas!

May the fire keep burning under the ashes,

Judita Q