The Search for Roots C. G. Jung and the Tradition of Gnosis Alfred Ribi \ Foreword by Lance S. Owens (original) (raw)
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The Search for Roots: C. G. Jung and the Tradition of Gnosis (Foreword by Lance S. Owens, 2013)
The Search for Roots C. G. Jung and the Tradition of Gnosis, Alfred Ribi, Foreword by Lance S. Owens (Gnosis Archive Books, 2013); ISBN-13: 978-0615850627
The publication in 2009 of C. G. Jung's The Red Book: Liber Novus has initiated a broad reassessment of Jung’s place in cultural history. Among many revelations, the visionary events recorded in the Red Book reveal the foundation of Jung’s complex association with the Western tradition of Gnosis. In The Search for Roots, Alfred Ribi closely examines Jung’s life-long association with Gnostic tradition. Dr. Ribi knows C. G. Jung and his tradition from the ground up. He began his analytical training with Marie-Louise von Franz in 1963, and continued working closely with Dr. von Franz for the next 30 years. For over four decades he has been an analyst, lecturer and examiner of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, where he also served as the Director of Studies. But even more importantly, early in his studies Dr. Ribi noted Jung’s underlying roots in Gnostic tradition, and he carefully followed those roots to their source. Alfred Ribi is unique in the Jungian analytical community for the careful scholarship and intellectual rigor he has brought to the study Gnosticism. In The Search for Roots, Ribi shows how a dialogue between Jungian and Gnostic studies can open new perspectives on the experiential nature of Gnosis, both ancient and modern. Creative engagement with Gnostic tradition broadens the imaginative scope of modern depth psychology and adds an essential context for understanding the voice of the soul emerging in our modern age. A Foreword by Lance Owens supplements this volume with a discussion of Jung's encounter with Gnostic tradition while composing his Red Book (Liber Novus). Dr. Owens delivers a fascinating and historically well-documented account of how Gnostic mythology entered into Jung's personal mythology in the Red Book. Gnostic mythology thereafter became for Jung a prototypical image of his individuation. Owens offers this conclusion: “In 1916 Jung had seemingly found the root of his myth and it was the myth of Gnosis. I see no evidence that this ever changed. Over the next forty years, he would proceed to construct an interpretive reading of the Gnostic tradition’s occult course across the Christian aeon: in Hermeticism, alchemy, Kabbalah, and Christian mysticism. In this vast hermeneutic enterprise, Jung was building a bridge across time, leading back to the foundation stone of classical Gnosticism. The bridge that led forward toward a new and coming aeon was footed on the stone rejected by the builders two thousand years ago.” Alfred Ribi's examination of Jung’s relationship with Gnostic tradition comes at an important time. Initially authored prior to the publication of Jung's Red Book, current release of this English edition offers a bridge between the past and the forthcoming understanding of Jung’s Gnostic roots.
Turn of an Age: The Spiritual Roots of Jungian Psychology in Hermeticism, Gnosticism and Alchemy, by Alfred Ribi. Edited with a Foreword by Lance S. Owens, 2019
In this book Alfred Ribi reaches back across two millennia, gathering and engaging an extraordinary collection of writings. With authority and fluency, Ribi draws together the antique texts of Hellenism, Gnosticism, Hermeticism and Alchemy, and illustrates how these nurture the visionary work of C. G. Jung. Into this tapestry Alfred Ribi weaves personal insights gained over half a century of experience as an analytical psychologist. He illuminates how the dreams and visions of modern individuals intertwine with the tradition that Jung indicated to be a spiritual antecedent of his psychology. This is the second volume of a two-volume work. The first volume, "The Search for Roots: C. G. Jung and the Tradition of Gnosis" was published in an English translation in 2013. That volume served as a general introduction to the more detailed and multifaceted exposition presented in this second volume. This book is addressed to serious students of Hermeticism, Gnosticism, and the works of C. G. Jung. It will richly reward those who give it their diligent attention. Authored by Alfred Ribi. Foreword by Lance S. Owens. Translated by Mark Kyburz Gnosis Archive Books ISBN 978-0578565507
C. G. Jung Collected Works Volume 12 Psychology and Alchemy
The two lectures were previously translated by Stanley Dell and published in The Integration of the Personality (New York, 1939; London, 1940) under the titles "Dream Symbols of the Process of Individuation" and "The Idea of Redemption in Alchemy." Professor Jung then considerably expanded them and added an introduction, in which he set out his whole position particularly in relation to religion. These three parts together with a short epilogue make up the Swiss volume. The translation now presented to the public has been awaited with impatience in many quarters, for it is one of Professor Jung's major works, to be compared in importance with Psychology of the Unconscious and Psychological Types. It may be said that round the material contained in this volume the major portion of his later work revolves. On this account Psychology and Alchemy is being published first, though it is not Volume 1 of the Collected Works. EDITORIAL NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION For this second edition of Volume 12, technical considerations made it necessary to reset the text, and this in turn made various improvements possible. The translation has been thoroughly revised, and additions and revisions have been made in accordance with the second Swiss edition, 1952. The bibliography and the footnote references have been corrected and brought up to date, particularly in respect of the author's subsequent publications in English. The paragraph numeration has been preserved, but the pagination has unavoidably changed. An entirely new index has been prepared. The late Mr. A. S. B. Glover was responsible for numerous improvements in the translations from the Latin and in the bibliographical references. The illustrations are printed almost entirely from new photographs; consequently the sources have sometimes had to be altered. For valuable assistance in obtaining new photographs the Editors are indebted to Mrs. Aniela Jaffé, Dr. Jolande Jacobi, and Dr. Rudolf Michel; for general editorial help, to Mrs. B. L. Honum Hull. After the author's death in 1961, the unpublished draft of a "prefatory note to the English edition," written in English, was found among his papers, and this has been added to the present edition. For permission to publish it, the Editors are indebted to the late Mrs. Marianne Niehus-Jung, then acting on behalf of the heirs of C. G. Jung. A variant of the text of Part II presenting the essay in its Eranos-Jahrbuch 1935 form appeared as "Dream Symbols of the Individuation Process" in Spiritual Disciplines (Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, 4; New York and London, 1959).
Self - Revista do Instituto Junguiano de São Paulo, 2019
This paper considers Jung’s lifelong engagement with the phenomenon of religion. More specifically, it examines the development of his theories in relation to the stages of his life and how religion gradually assumed a definite place in his theory and practice; moving over from psychiatry through psychoanalysis and typology to the theory of archetypes, and finally to the psychology of religious motifs. This study is based on a large literature review of the Jungian works and accounts about the author. From the years spent composing his “The Red Book”, Jung struggled to understand the psychological and historical effects of Christianity. The older he got, the more he felt a powerful sense that it was his task to treat the spiritual and religious ills of his patients. His whole oeuvre can be understood as an attempt to grasp the future religious development of the West, in the conviction that religion is necessary for the spiritual evolution of mankind. A strong example of Jung’s influence in the second half of the 20th century were the annual Eranos Conferences, which he promoted to discuss innovative ideas about religion. The conferences became one of the most important forums of dissemination of his religious ideas to a broader public. In the course of his research he actively cultivated dialogue with theologians and historians of religion, and everything he published had to do with religion to a greater or lesser degree. He even employed religious terms for his therapeutic format, like in the first of the four stages of his analytical process: confession, elucidation, education and transformation. Keywords: Carl Jung, psychology, religion, Eranos
Carl Jung and Maximus the Confessor, Book Review by DANIEL HEIDE
2017
The chief task of G.C. Tympas' Carl Jung and Maximus the Confessor on Psychic Development is, in the words of the author, to bring together "two dissimilar theories on psychic development" by introducing "a theoretical framework for a synthesis that integrates and, at the same time, exceeds both" (1). Such a theoretical framework, or trans-disciplinary methodology, Tympas argues, is necessary for the critical comparison of Jung's modern psychological model of individuation with Maximus Confessor's ancient theological ideal of deification, or theosis. The aim of this book, then, is to attempt a critical comparison between the psychological and the religious approaches to psychic development or spiritual progress without reducing one to the other. The immediate question that presents itself is, of course, why Jung and Maximus Confessor? What is to be gained from a comparison between an ancient Orthodox theologian and a modern analytical psychologist? The initial inspiration behind this novel comparison appears to be a personal one: Tympas holds a PhD in psychoanalytic studies and serves as a priest in the Greek Orthodox Church. As such, the author's attempt at a non-reductionist comparison between a psychologist and a theologian represents the author's personal attempt at a reconciliation of these two, distinct approaches to interior development. Due to his intimate acquaintance with both parties, Tympas holds the conviction that a "retrospective encounter" between Jung and Maximus could serve to correct Jung's tendency towards psychological reductionism (despite his generally positive view of religion), while providing an ontological grounding for his metaphysically ambiguous notions of synchronicity, individuation, and the Self. On the other hand, Jung's insights into the workings of the unconscious psyche could enrich the traditional, theological understanding of the personal journey towards deification, which tends to minimise the personal and socio-cultural aspects of the journey. The "horizontal" approach of Jungian psychology coupled with the "vertical" approach of Maximian theology, Tympas suggests, are ultimately complementary and capable of being integrated by means of a trans-disciplinary paradigm of development. The need for such a trans-disciplinary paradigm compels Tympas to devote considerable attention to the problem of methodology-a problem with which the book begins and ends. In the interests of avoiding a reductionistic approach, Tympas suggests the inclusion of multiple disciplines such as biology, sociology, psychology, and theology. He envisions this inter, or trans-disciplinary approach to psycho-spiritual development unfolding according to a fivefold "ontological hierarchy":