Beginning in the years leading up to the Great War, both C.G. Jung and J.R.R. Tolkien independently began to undergo profound imaginal experiences. Jung recorded these fantasies in a large red manuscript that he named Liber Novus, referred to simply as The Red Book. For Tolkien, this imaginal journey revealed to him the world of Middle-earth, whose stories and myths eventually led to the writing of The Lord of the Rings, a book he named within its own imaginal history The Red Book of Westmarch.

This lecture explores the many synchronistic parallels between Jung’s and Tolkien’s Red Books: the style and content of their works of art, the narrative descriptions and scenes in their texts, the nature of their visions and dreams, and an underlying similarity in world view that emerged from their experiences. The two men seem to have been simultaneously treading parallel paths through the imaginal realm.

It’s a dark time, growing darker. Thanatos is winning. What to do? Each person must answer this question for themselves, and it requires the deepest possible reflection. This seminar will illustrate my answer. I will tell what I have learned from those whom I have known who worked personally with Jung. Their approaches, insights, and experiences have informed my thinking and contributed to my personal work on the central issue. I will convey what Jung has taught me through his work and his appearance in my dreams and active imaginations. I will also describe what other figures have taught me in dreams, visions, and imaginal experiences. All these experiences reveal that the answer, for me, lies in the realm of eros. To explore this, I will use my essay, “Eros in Language, Myth, and Dream”; A close reading of this text, along with material from my book, Psyche Speaks, will provide many points for deeper exploration of why I believe that eros is the answer to the dark spirits loose in the world and how we can enact eros in our daily lives. Finally, I will reflect on the meaning and purpose I have found in the fifty years of my being a Jungian analyst.

Come prepared to ask questions, make comments, and contribute your experiences to this urgent question.

• Our text is The Red Book: Liber Novus  A Reader’s Edition, by C.G. Jung, Edited and with an Introduction by Sonu Shamdasani
• No advance reading is required.
• We will be reading and discussing the work in small, consecutive sections week by week, until we have completed the book.
• Our instructor Bette Joram will be the Zoom Host as well as record each session. All sessions will be recorded. 
• The Jung Society has made this class simple and affordable in a way that supports the operations of the Jung Society.
• This is an ongoing class that folks can pay for per session.
• No one will be excluded due to inability to pay.  Please contact our office manager, office@jungseattle.org for assistance.

“…the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” – C.G. Jung

Our in-person discussion group continues to meet weekly on Saturday mornings 11:00am to 12:30pm in the Nancy Alvord Library, room 222 of the Good Shepherd Center, Seattle. Participants suggest and discuss a variety of Jungian and depth psychological topics and benefit from community connection. Please join us!

Contact Laura at arweninrivendell@gmail.com with any questions, or just drop by!

We look forward to seeing you.

The intractable nature of the gun violence problem in the United States resists meaningful analysis. Even more so, the problem resists effective solutions. Perhaps this resistance itself is meaningful, pointing to suppression and denial of deeper problems in the national psyche. Pushing beyond familiar

treatments of gun culture, this presentation will examine the depth psychology of homicide by firearm by considering the collective myths and cultural complexes that make this particular form of violence so prevalent. Compared to similar societies around the globe, these myths and complexes both heighten the propensity to target and shoot others and lower the capacity for the soul-searching necessary to mitigate this propensity. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of where responsibility for gun violence lives, and where transformative possibilities may also be located.

Dante’s pilgrimage begins in a moment of crisis: “midway in our life’s journey . . . alone in a dark wood” (Inferno 1.1-3). The only way out is down – into the hell of division and violence – then up the purgatorial mountain of spiritual and psychic renewal. At last the poet is able to soar to the empyrean and gaze at the “supernal face” of universal Love – so radiant that no one who sees it can ever again turn away.

Like Dante, we are living in a period of profound social division and spiritual dislocation. His poem can serve as a map for our own essential journey to “the Light of the intellect, which is love unending” (Paradiso 30. 40) where we can find ourselves anew.