The Sun and the Sword, The Moon and the Mirror

The Sun and the Sword,
The Moon and the Mirror

by Erel Shalit

Besides the more commonly accounted for masculine, solar aspect of the hero’s journey, we may refer to a feminine, lunar attribute as well. They represent different attitudes vis-à-vis the unconscious.

The sun-hero has a dual relationship to the Great Mother, as exemplified by Heracles; his name means Glory of Hera, yet the goddess drives him to madness. He sets out on the mission to break free from the bonds of the Great Mother, to face her magnitude, ready to draw his sword in combat with her however awesome she seems to be, and to enhance his ego-consciousness. The sun-hero, while not always able to fulfill the entire mission of his journey, works towards replacing id and the unconscious with ego. He must abandon the comfort and the security of the kingdom of childhood, about which Jung writes:

For him who looks backwards the whole world, even the starry sky, becomes the mother who bends over him and enfolds him on all sides ... As such a condition must be terminated, and as it is at the same time an object of regressive longing, it must be sacrificed in order that discriminated entities - i.e., conscious contents - may come into being.(1)

On his way to consciousness the hero encounters monstrous and malicious obstacles that, as Jung says, rise in his path and hamper his ascent, wearing “the shadowy features of the Terrible Mother, who saps his strength with the poison of secret doubt and retrospective longing.”(2) He risks being devoured by the Earth Mother, destroyed by the gods, to burn in the flames of passion set afire by the nymphs, or die in battle with his competing Martian warriors. His world is patriarchal, goal-directed and lawful, thus he may lose direction and plunge into unconsciousness, teased and tantalized by the feminine seductress intruding from afar, as became the tragic fate of Samson.

It is the sun-hero’s undertaking to break away, to free himself from the archetypal world.

Cover image by @ Susan Bostrom-Wong

Simultaneously, as part of his mission, he must gather the strength required to bring the very same archetypal energy into the ego and human consciousness. Thus, the hero has one foot in divinity, one in the world of mortals. It is the hero’s task to dismember the archetypal energies and transpose them as increasingly human complexes into the personal world and the realm of the ego. This is what Prometheus does when he brings fire to man. His name means forethinker; the Promethean fire is the capacity to plan the use of that natural transformative energy, fire, for the benefit of mankind, to create consciousness and acculturation, heating and cooking, creating new materials and fresh ideas.(3) But also when the complex has become autonomous, split-off from consciousness and detracting energy from the ego, the hero is called for. The man who compulsively clung to a job far below his capabilities because of his fear of losing it was constantly threatened by dismissal until he gathered his strength to fight the complex that nearly destroyed him.

The sun-hero may be the obstinate two-year-old who repeatedly says no and no to being dressed, “I dress.” Or the five-year-old who pulls the hero’s phallic sword with which he fights the beasts within—as they are projected upon the little kindergarten-brutes of the real world without. The sun-hero is unmistakably masculine, a He, whether a boy or a girl.

The solar hero brings something new, something formerly unknown into the consciousness of the individual or that of society. By means of the adventures of the sun-hero, man has, for instance, accomplished scientific achievements and expanded geographical boundaries. The solar aspect of the hero pertains to patriarchal consciousness. With his sword, the hero cuts and divides, which is structurally essential for the establishment and expansion of consciousness.

But there is a lunar aspect or phase of the hero’s journey as well, which may likewise unfold when the hero abandons the conventions of the royal throne and the safe rule of ego, when he stands up against and turns away from collective consciousness. This is the case, for instance, with Buddha, whose way is enlightened by reflection rather than by the splendor of the sword. It pertains to conceiving, rather than “deliberate doing,” and, says Neumann, “time must ripen, and with it, like the seeds sown in the earth, knowledge matures.”(4)

This is the moon-hero. He, or in fact She, because it pertains rather to the feminine, whether in man or woman, ventures into the dangerous paths, the forests and the rivers, the hills and the valleys, the labyrinths and the netherworlds, the pandemonium, the chaos and the torment outside the boundaries of collective consciousness, beyond norms and conventions. She is maybe not the skillful goal-directed archer Apollo, but rather his twin sister Artemis, the hunter goddess roaming in the wilderness and the forest, armed with silver bow and arrows. This may be the sense of drifting around the outskirts of town, sneaking into backyards, to hike around in foreign places in the geography of the world or in the psychography of the soul, learning “how to observe nature, the way it grows and changes.”(5) It is dangerous; as happens to Artemis, by mistake, you may kill your loved one, or if you come too close you may be transformed into a stag, because it is an oscillating journey between death and rebirth, waxing and waning, appearance and disappearance, love and disaster, reflection and deflection, healing and wounding. The ground easily quakes, and on winding roads and behind thorny bushes the forces of love and madness, pain and desire, despair and anticipation struggle with savage ferocity. The lunar hero pertains to relationship and unification, but breakup and falling apart, as well.

The hero’s lunar quality refers to the mirror and reflection, rather than the sword and division. As we shall see later, Perseus is equipped with both.

In its lunar aspect, the hero does not attack the unconscious. It entails a conscious turning towards the unconscious, quietly and humbly awaiting what in the course of time arises and unfolds in the hero’s reflective mirror. As Campbell says:

The mirror, reflecting the goddess and drawing her forth from the august repose of her divine non-manifestation, is symbolic of the world, the field of the reflected image. Therein divinity is pleased to regard its own glory, and this pleasure is itself inducement to the act of manifestation or “creation.”(6)

The following is the dream of a sixty-year-old man, slowly finding his way home to himself after having “been away” for a long time, during an extraverted career:

I feel an urge to return home. I have been away for a long time. As I get home, I see that a man sits on a chair in the attic, watching the dark sky through a telescope—there is a big opening in the roof. He calls me to look, and I try to look carefully through the telescope, but I see nothing. I turn and turn the telescope, yet, I can’t see anything. He shouts and yells at me and I feel very embarrassed, and he tells me angrily to go and sit and wait next to a little girl who sits on a bench. She looks like she is in a dream state, just looking up at the sky. First I look at her, and then I lose the focus, and like her I just look at the dark sky, and then, suddenly, a very bright star shines far far away but very very clearly, and then I see the moon, so close, almost as if I could touch it.

Naturally, the lunar aspect of the hero is closely related to matriarchal consciousness, as elaborated in depth by Erich Neumann.(7) Queen Jocasta, Shining Moon, as representative of the feminine side of consciousness, has been discussed elsewhere.(8) However, Neumann is mainly concerned with matriarchal or moon-consciousness as something preceding patriarchal consciousness, pertaining to “enchantment and magic, ... inspiration and prophecy” rather than “its recurrence in the psychology of individuation, which is a reappearance at a higher level, as is always the case where, in the course of normal development, we again encounter something already experienced.”(9) I believe the lunar and the solar elements constitute complementary aspects of the hero and his/her journey, even if the one may precede or dominate the other.

In fact, as regards the lunar aspect of the hero’s journey, he naturally ventures into darkness only as the sun sets, rather than at dawn. Yet, the hero needs to be equipped with some of the day’s light to withstand the night’s depressive darkness, and with summer’s warmth for the cold loneliness of winter not to overwhelm him.

He travels at night-time, west to east, in the reflective light of the moon rather than in the unambiguous light of day. “The alchemical work starts with the descent into darkness (nigredo), i.e., the unconscious” says Jung.(10) Only thereafter “one arrives at the east and the newborn sun,” says Edinger.(11) Ayala, a forty-year-old woman, dreams:

It is midnight, midsummer night. I am barefoot, walking from the sea eastward, on a thorny field. My feet hurt, I am bleeding. Then, suddenly, a path opens up, crossing the field in the centre, dividing it in two, lit up by the light of the moon. As I walk along, still feeling the pain in my feet, a man suddenly appears from the dark and blocks my way. He is religious, completely shrouded in his Tallith [the prayer shawl], even his head is covered. He barely notices me, and he does not move to let me pass. I have to stop and wait, and listen to him reciting a prayer. I look at him as he prays, and very quietly he looks at me, in a warm and kind way. I feel his quiet prayer fills me up within, and he then blows the shofar [the ram’s horn], and I feel a wave of excitement.

While the dream was experienced during an afternoon nap, it takes place during summer’s brief night. The dreamer is guided along her path by the moon. The peripeteia occurs when her road is blocked, but she need not actively struggle with her adversary. Rather, this woman, who had experienced a deep narcissistic wound due to lack of adequate mirroring in early childhood, allows herself in the dream to be mirrored by the religious man’s chanting prayer. Jung says:

Christ, or the self, is a “mirror”: on the one hand it reflects the subjective consciousness of the disciple, making it visible to him, and on the other hand it “knows” Christ, that is to say it does not merely reflect the empirical man, it also shows him as a (transcendental) whole.(12)

The dream-ego, the I in our dreams, is our recurrent nightly hero, our messenger who ventures into dreamland, and returns home with a letter from the Self.(13) In the above dream, Ayala encounters her adversary who emerges from the shadow, not as an enemy to be fought, but as a mirroring or reflecting other. This is the hero’s lunar rather than solar attribute. It may even be that the dream ego will not really bring anything new into consciousness, but her soul becomes inspired and excited, i.e., setting the breath of life in motion. From the lunar perspective, the event, such as in this dream, needs less to be interpreted, but rather be libidinized by the moisture of the Self.

(1) C.G. Jung, CW 5, par. 646.
(2)“The Dual Mother,” CW 5, par. 611.
(3) Shalit, The Hero and His Shadow, p. 151.
(4) Erich Neumann, The Fear of the Feminine, pp. 92, 94.
(5) Verena Kast, The Mermaid in the Pond, p. 55.
(6) The Hero with a Thousand Faces, p. 213.
(7) ‘The Moon and Matriarchal Consciousness,’ in The Fear of the Feminine, pp. 64-118.
(8) Shalit, The Complex, p. 55.
(9) The Fear of the Feminine, pp. 74, 92.
(10) CW 9ii., par. 231.
(11) Edward Edinger, The Aion Lectures, p. 116.
(12) CW 11, par. 427.
(13) The Talmudic dictum says: “A dream not interpreted is like a letter not read.”

This article is an excerpt from Enemy, Cripple, Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path.

For a review of the book by Ann Walker in Psychological Perspectives, please see here.

Erel Shalit is a Jungian psychoanalyst in Tel Aviv, Israel. He is a training and supervising analyst, and past president of the Israel Society of Analytical Psychology (ISAP). He is the author of the novella, Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return, and several other publications, including The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel and The Complex: Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego.

C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann: The Zaddik, Sophia, and the Shekinah, by Lance Owens

Dr. Lance Owens has written an important paper on aspects of the feminine, which he generously offers for free download at the www.academia.edu site.

The paper was originally presented at the symposium 'Creative Minds in Dialogue: The Relationship between C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann,' held at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, June 24-26, 2016 (see also here).

On April 27, 2017, Dr. Owens will present on Neumann and the Feminine, together with Rina Porat, Jungian Analyst, session four of the Asheville webinar series ERICH NEUMANN – HIS LIFE AND WORK AND HIS RELATIONSHIP WITHC.G. JUNG.

Erich Neumann and C. G. Jung each affirmed that Western civilization was at the threshold of an epochal transformation. Jung proclaimed in Answer to Job that the initiation of a new age demanded the “anamnesis” – the “remembering” – of the primordial feminine archetype of Sophia.  Neumann recognized the task of remembrance as an awakening to call of the exiled Shekinah.   Working from personal perspectives distinctly rooted in their own unique Christian and Jewish heritages, both men sought to liberate feminine Wisdom from the exile inflicted by theological, patriarchal and primarily logocentric cultural paradigms.  We will briefly review the story of Sophia and Shekinah, and consider how Jung and Neumann engaged this primal feminine image in their lives and their psychological writings.

Lance S. Owens is a physician in clinical practice and an historian with focused interest in C. G. Jung and Gnostic traditions. Since release of the Red Book: Liber Novus in 2009, Dr. Owens has published several historical studies focused on the intimate relationship between Jung’s collected writings and the visionary experiences recorded in the Red Book and the Black Book journals.  He is the creator and managing editor of The Gnosis Archive, gnosis.org, the primary Internet archive of classical Gnostic sources, including the Nag Hammadi texts.

Jung in Love can be purchased at Amazon, or downloaded here.

The Search for Roots is also available at Amazon, as well as downloaded here. 

Erich Neumann's Jacob and Esau: On the collective symbolism of the brother motif, and Turbulent Times, Creative Minds: Erich Neumann and C. G. Jung in Relationship are available at Amazon.

C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann: Paintings from the Psyche

A Five-Part Webinar Series

Click Here to Register for the Series or Watch the free First Webinar

Next Seminar Thursday, February 23rd @11AM ET:

ERICH NEUMANN – HIS LIFE, WORK and RELATIONSHIP WITH C.G. JUNG

Nancy Swift Furlotti will show and compare paintings by Neumann that have recently been discovered with some of Jung’s paintings in The Red Book. For both men, painting represented an engagement with the unconscious and a central feature of their individuation processes. There will also be references to Neumann’s writings on art and artists with the assistance of Murray Stein.

Active imagination was the technique C. G. Jung developed to amplify images from his dreams and visions. It allowed him to delve deeper into the mythical and collective layers of human imagination to more specifically understand what the psyche was trying to communicate. He used this extensively while on his own inner journey described in, The Red Book, and encouraged his patients and colleagues to do so, as well. Erich Neumann was one of Jung’s foremost disciples. After commencing analytical work with Jung, he kept a dream journal and began using active imagination on his own dream images. Somewhat later he, too, began to paint these images creating a long series, much like those in Jung’s Red Book. The comparison between the two sets of paintings is striking in both their differences and similarities. We will explore a full image series from each one as a way of gleaning a deeper understanding of the psychic processes of these two prominent analysts and good friends.

Turbulent Times, Creative Minds

Erich Neumann and C. G. Jung in Relationship

This volume of essays by well-known Jungian analysts and scholars provides the most comprehensive comparison to date between the works of C.G. Jung and Erich Neumann. Reflections are based on their extensive correspondence recently published, their differing cultural backgrounds, and the turbulent times surrounding their personal and professional relationship. Among the many specific subjects discussed are Jung and Neumann on art and religion, their views on the problem of evil, and clinical aspects of Neumann’s work. Also included are personal memories of both Jung and Neumann family members.
The book includes exclusive photos from Eranos, and several illustrations in color.

Contents:

Introduction (Erel Shalit and Murray Stein) ix
I. The Correspondence (1933–1960)

Uncertain Friends in Particular Matters: The Relationship between C. G. Jung and

Erich Neumann (Martin Liebscher) 25

Companions on the Way: Consciousness in Conflict (Nancy Swift Furlotti) 45

Neumann and Kirsch in Tel Aviv: A Case of Sibling Rivalry? (Ann Lammers) 71

II. Cultural Backgrounds

German Kultur and the Discovery of the Unconscious: The Promise and Discontents of the German-Jewish Experience (Paul Mendes-Flohr) 83

Basel, Jung’s Cultural Background and the Proto-Zionism of Samuel Preiswerk (Ulrich Hoerni) 95

The Cultural Psyche: From Ancestral Roots to Postmodern Routes (Erel Shalit) 111

III. Troubled Times

Carl Jung and Hans Fierz in Palestine and Egypt: Journey from March 13th to

April 6th, 1933 (Andreas Jung) 131

1933—The Year of Jung’s Journey to Palestine/Israel and Several Beginnings (Thomas Fischer) 135

Jungians in Berlin 1931–1945: Between Therapy, Emigration and Resistance (Jörg Rasche) 151

IV. The Problem of Evil

The Search for a New Ethic: Professional and Clinical Dilemmas (Henry Abramovitch) 167

Erich Neumann and C. G. Jung on “The Problem of Evil” (Murray Stein) 185

V. Neumann and Eranos (1948–1960)

Neumann at Eranos (Riccardo Bernardini) 199

“Dear, dear Olga!” - A Letter to Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (Julie Neumann) 237

VI. On the Arts

The Great Mother in Israeli Art (Gideon Ofrat) 245

Jung, Neumann and Art (Christian Gaillard) 261

The Magic Flute (Tom Kelly) 299

A Brief Comment on Neumann and His Essay “On Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’” (Debora Kutzinski) 309

VII. Clinical Contributions

Erich Neumann’s Concept of the Distress-ego (Rina Porat) 315

Can You Hear My Voice? (Batya Brosh Palmoni) 333

Neve Tzeelim—A Field of Creation and Development (Rivka Lahav) 347

VIII. On Religion

Erich Neumann and Hasidism (Tamar Kron) 367

Theological Positions in the Correspondence between Jung and Neumann (Angelica Löwe) 385

IX. On Synchronicity

Toward Psychoid Aspects of Evolutionary Theory (Joseph Cambray) 401

X. “Memories from My (Grand)Father’s House”

Introduction 411

Some Memories of My Grandparents (Andreas Jung) 413

Memories (Ulrich Hoerni) 415

Memories (Micha Neumann) 417

Memories (Ralli Loewenthal-Neumann) 421

Memories (Debora Kutzinski) 425

A Response (Thomas B. Kirsch) 429

Remembering the Mamas and Papas (Nomi Kluger Nash) 433

Memories of Max Zeller (1904–1978) (Jacqueline Zeller) 437

Bibliography

About the Contributors

Cover image by Mordecai Ardon

Available at Amazon, and at Chiron

***********
Jacob and Esau 

On the Collective Symbolism of the Brother Motif (2nd printing)

by Erich Neumann

cover image by Meir Gur Arieh

Turbulent Times, Creative Minds: Erich Neumann and C.G. Jung in Relationship (1933-1960)

Erich Neumann at his desk

Now Available!
Turbulent Times, Creative Minds 

This volume of essays by well-known Jungian analysts and scholars provides the most comprehensive comparison to date between the works of C.G. Jung and Erich Neumann. Reflections are based on their extensive correspondence recently published, their differing cultural backgrounds, and the turbulent times surrounding their personal and professional relationship. Among the many specific subjects discussed are Jung and Neumann on art and religion, their views on the problem of evil, and clinical aspects of Neumann’s work. Also included are personal memories of both Jung and Neumann family members.

Sections:

I. The Correspondence (1933–1960)

II. Cultural Backgrounds

III. Troubled Times

IV. The Problem of Evil

V. Neumann and Eranos (1948–1960)

VI. On the Arts

VII. Clinical Contributions

VIII. On Religion

IX. On Synchronicity

X. “Memories from My (Grand)Father’s House”

Available at Amazon, and at Chiron

***********
Jacob and Esau 

On the Collective Symbolism of the Brother Motif (2nd printing)

by Erich Neumann

cover image by Meir Gur Arieh 

title page image by Jacob Steinhardt

Should psychologists and psychoanalysts speak about politics?

Should clinicians and mental health professionals remain with in the closed vessel of the consulting room, or should they step outside these confines and express themselves regarding trends that are taking place in society and the world, about elections and candidates, about democracy and the characteristics of different regimes?

Psychoanalysts such as Freud, Jung, Winnicott, Erik Erikson, Erich Fromm, Erich Neumann and others have often stepped outside the consulting room and looked at the world and society around them.

C.G. Jung writes in his preface to "Essays on Contemporary Events,"

The storm of events does not sweep down upon him [the doctor] only from the great world outside; he feels the violence of its impact even in the quiet of his consulting-room ... 

As he has a responsibility towards his patients, he cannot afford to withdraw to the peaceful island of undisturbed scientific work, but must constantly descend into the arena of world events, in order to join in the battle of conflicting passions and opinions...

For this reason the psychologist cannot avoid coming to grips with contemporary history, even if his very soul shrinks from the political uproar, the lying propaganda, and the jarring speeches of the demagogues.

It is in this spirit I have written The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel, and Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return. I also relate to this in 'The Cultural Psyche: From Ancestral Roots to Postmodern Routes,' in the volume Turbulent Times, Creative Minds: Erich Neumann and C.G. Jung in Relationship (eds. Erel Shalit and Murray Stein). Another recent book well worth mentioning is A Clear and Present Danger: Narcissism in the Era of President Trump, edited by Leonard Cruz and Steven Buser.

The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel introduces a psychological perspective on the history, development, and myths of modern Israel.

The realization of Zionism relied on the pioneer, who revolted against the Way of the Father and sought spiritual redemption through the revival of Mother Earth in the ancient land. Myth and history, psyche and matter are constantly intertwined in the birth and development of Israel, for example when in the Declaration of Independence we are told that pioneers make deserts bloom, the text actually says they make spirits blossom.

Pioneer, guardsman and then warrior were admired hero-ideals. However, in the shadow of the hero and the guiding myths of revolt, redemption, strength and identity-change, are feelings of despair, doubt, weakness and fear.  Within renewal, lurks the threat of annihilation.

Suppressed aspects of past and present myths, which linger in the shadow, are exposed. Psychological consequences of Israel’s wars, from independence to the present war of terror, are explored on a personal note and from a psychoanalytic perspective. Shadow aspects of the conflicting guiding myths Peace and Greater Israel are examined, as well as mythical connections, such as between Jerusalem and the respective archetypal images of Wholeness and Satan.

Elizabeth Clark-Stern writes:

Psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote in The Red Book of the distinction between “The Spirit of the Times” and “The Spirit of the Depths”. We see this vividly demonstrated when we put Ari Shavit’s acclaimed new book My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel alongside Erel Shalit’s classic work, The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel. The former takes us through the history of the heroic creation of Israel, including the darkest “shadow” behaviors of the Jewish state in the 1948 massacre of the Arabs of Lydda.

In the latter work, Erel Shalit tells us why.

This is no simplistic psychological analysis. The brilliance of this Israeli Jungian analyst is that he offers no easy solutions, plumbing the paradox of the necessary heroic identity of the Jewish state, and yet, around every corner is the shadow of every hero: the beggar, the frightened one, the part of all of us that is dependent on forces outside of our control.

It is also very important to note that Erel Shalit’s book is fascinating reading for anyone interested in the inner workings of the soul. On one level Israel is the backdrop for the author to explore how shadow, myth, and projection work in all of us, regardless of our life circumstance, nationality, environment, or history. It even includes a comprehensive glossary of Jungian terms that has some of the best definitions I have ever encountered, and hence a find for readers new to Jung.

And, of course, for people who are fascinated by the scope and depth of the story of Israel, this is a simply great read. It stands alone, but read as a companion to Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land, Erel Shalit’s Hero and His Shadow gives us The Spirit of the Depths in all its dimension. We may not be able to resolve the Arab/Israeli conflict, but we can learn many things from this brave, complex Israeli author, that we can apply to healing the inner and outer wars in our own lives.

Requiem returns us to an eternal theme, a dialogue with Soul, and we know quite well what happens when one dialogues with Soul—we change, consciousness is enlarged, the impossible becomes possible and we no longer are compelled to blindly follow in the deathly path of our forefathers.

Requiem is a fictitious account of a scenario played out in the mind of many Israelis, pertaining to existential reflections and apocalyptic fears, but then, as well, the hope and commitment that arise from the abyss of trepidation. While set in Israel sometime in the present, it is a story that reaches into the timelessness of history, weaving discussions with Heine and Kafka into a tale of universal implications.

Artist Junko Chodes writes:

From the first pages of this book, the tone of a masterpiece emerges powerfully.

This book makes us realize that the "Israel problem" cannot be understood in a journalistic frame of mind. Politics, war, land, culture, and contemporary experience are expressions of the deep core of human life, the core of the human soul.

This is an important book for anyone who thinks about "cultural identity" and the love of one's own country and culture.

  

All the World’s a Stage, and a Stage of Life

Fisher King Press to publish 

The Cycle of Life 

by Erel Shalit

“The art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts.”   

 - C.G. Jung, CW 8, par. 789.

In the first half of life, the task of the young traveler is to depart from home, to step out into the world in search for his or her adventure, to find his or her own individual path. However, in the second half, we find ourselves on what often amounts to a very long journey in search of Home. In many a tale, the hero, for instance Gilgamesh, sets off on his road to find life’s elixir, while other stories, such as the Odyssey, revolve around the hero’s long and arduous journey home.

This archetypal journey of life is constantly repeated along the never-ending process of individuation. We find ourselves returning to this venture repeatedly, every night, as we set out on our nightly voyage into the landscape of our unconscious. Many dreams begin by being on the way, for instance, “I am on my way to …,” I am driving on a road that leads into the desert …,” I am walking through one room after the other in a long corridor-like building …,” “I am walking towards my office, but it looks different than in reality,” “I walk on the pavement and on the opposite side of the street someone seems to follow me …,” “I go down into an underground parking…,” “I am in my car, but someone I don’t know is driving,” or, “I have to go to the place from where I came ...”

Prominently, we are familiar with the journey of Dante, who at the very beginning of his Divine Comedy finds himself “Midway along the journey of our life.”


A partial list of topics explored in The Cycle of Life include:

I. The Journey
   Stages and Seasons
   Jung’s Stages of Life
   All the World’s a Stage, and a Stage of Life
   Being on the Way—A Way of Being
   Hermes and the Journey: Being on the Way
   Backward and Forward
   The Crossroads
   + more
II. The Child
   The Child in the Mirror
   Psychotherapy and Childhood
   The Divine Child
   From Divine to Human
   Eros, Psyche and Pleasure
   + more
III. The Puer and the Puella
   Between Shame and Fear
   Wine, Spirit and Fire
   Prometheus—the Thoughtful Thief
   + more
IV. The Adult
   King on Earth
   Boundaries of Reality
   Celestial Jerusalem—Terrestrial Jerusalem
   The King who Refuses to Die
   The Dried-up Earth
   The Limping Ego
   The Empty Shell
   + more
V. i. The Senex
V. ii. Homage to Sophocles
V. iii. The Last Chapter: Self and Meaning
   Ancestral Roots
   An Oak and an Acorn
   We Are All Beggars, Are We Not?
  + more

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting Edge Fiction, and a growing list of alternative titles.

• We Ship Worldwide.
• Credit Cards Accepted.
• Phone Orders Welcomed. Toll free in the US & Canada: 1-800-228-9316 International +1-831-238-7799 skype: fisher_king_press

New York Jung Foundation: A History of the Dream

The 2011 President's Lecture Series


A History of the Dream: Fate and Destiny from Gilgamesh to Jung

Erel Shalit, PhD

Tuesday, March 22, 2011, 7:00 - 8:30 pm

Tickets: Jung Foundation members $20, General Public $25

Full information at:
http://www.cgjungny.org/lectures_04.html

The dream is a muthos, a mouth that gives expression to the voice of fate and destiny. A story of the dream is told from the ancient dreams of Gilgamesh and Nebuchadnezzar to the Greek discourse; from Freud and Dora on to Jung's final dream.

By tracing the dream and the image, we follow man's grand opus of turning pre-destined fate into prospective destiny, until hubris may again endanger the future.

Dr. Erel Shalit is a Jungian psychoanalyst in Ra'anana, Israel. He is a training and supervising analyst, and past President of the Israel Society of Analytical Psychology. He has served as liaison person of the International Association of Analytical Psychology (IAAP) with the Jung Society of Bulgaria. He is a past Director of the Shamai Davidson Community Mental Health Clinic, at the Shalvata Psychiatric Centre in Israel. Erel Shalit has served as officer in the IDF Medical Corps, and is a member of The Council for Peace and Security. He is Academic Director of the 'Jung's Analytical Psychology' program at Bar Ilan University. He is the author of Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return (2010), Enemy, Cripple & Beggar: Shadows in the Hero's Path (2008; the book was a nominee for the 2009 Gradiva Award for Best Theoretical Book, National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis), The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel (2004), The Complex: Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego (2002), and The Life Cycle: Themes and Tales of the Journey (June 21, 2011). Dr. Shalit lectures at professional institutes, universities, and cultural forums in Israel, Europe and the United States.


Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return is on sale now for $14.95, and Enemy, Cripple, Beggar is on sale now for $19.95 or $30.00 for the pair when ordered directly from the Fisher King Press. You can also order The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitcal Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel directly from Fisher King Press. Phone orders welcomed, Credit Cards accepted. 1-800-228-9316 toll free in the US & Canada, International +1-831-238-7799

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The Red Book Binder and the Craftsman’s Ego

I see the craftsman as a central image of the archetypally rooted adult ego. The hero, who serves as a bridge between the archetypal and the individual realms, has frequently both a divine and a personal father. The latter is often a craftsman. For the hero to set out on his journey into the depths and the vast lands of the unconscious, he or she needs to be ignited by the very sparks of the beyond, as they manifest in ego-consciousness.

Jung writes,
The hero’s father is often a master carpenter or some kind of artisan. According to an Arabian legend, Terah, the father of Abraham, was a master craftsman who could cut a shaft from any bit of wood, which means in Arabic usage that he was a begetter of excellent sons. … Joseph, the father of Jesus, was a carpenter, and so was Cinyras, the father of Adonis, who was supposed to have invented the hammer, the lever, roof-building and mining. …In fairytales, the hero’s father is, more modestly, the traditional woodcutter.[1]

The original Red Book of Jung's is a masterpiece not only of his, but of bookbinder craftsmanship as well. Sonu Shamdasani writes, “After completing the handwritten Draft, Jung had it typed, and edited. …The first section of the work …was composed on parchment. Jung then commissioned a large folio volume of over 600 pages, bound in red leather, from the bookbinders, Emil Stierli.”[2]

While Jung’s active imaginations, the fantasy material that forms the basis of his interpretations and elaborations, preceded their inscription in the Red Book, the ego’s sublime craftsmanship may be required for the heroic descent into the darkness of the unknown. The impressively bound pages of the red leather-covered tome hold and contain the inscription of Jung’s remarkable descent into the archetypal depths of the unconscious. The masterfully bound book is like the crafted ego that enables the hero’s journey. “It is the creation of the alchemical vessel that invites the soul into dialogue and union to bring forth the divine. This carefully crafted and beautiful Red Book honored the process and contents as a container for Jung's transformation.”[3]

The craftsman replicates the divine on earth by means of his skill, patience, carefulness and hard work. The first craftsman in the Bible was Bezalel. He built the Tabernacle, the tent set up by Moses, in which the Ark of the Covenant – a chest of acacia wood holding the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments – was carried through the wilderness. Thereby he replicated creation. Bezalel “knew the combinations of letters with which heaven and earth were made,” [that is, the letters of God’s name], and thus was able to build the Tabernacle, which was considered “a complete microcosm, a miraculous copy of everything that is in heaven and on earth.”[4]He thus created an imago mundi, a crafted replica of the universe, wherein, like in a temple, the divine can dwell on earth.

With wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, a soulful year during which concern for the world we live in will be at the top of the agenda of those that lead our world into the coming decade.

The above is excerpted from a forthcoming Fisher King Press publication by Erel Shalit on Archetypal Images of the Life Cycle.

[1]CW 5, par. 515.
[2]‘Introduction,’ The Red Book, p. 203.
[3]Nancy Furlotti, personal communication.
[4]Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, p. 166f.

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