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The Receptive and the Creative: Jung’s Red Book for our Time in Light of Daoist Alchemy
Featuring Ann Chia-Yi Li
11/7/18 at 11AM Eastern US Time
The Asheville Jung Center is very pleased to announce an upcoming webinar about the new book Jung’s Red Book for Our Time: Searching for Soul under Postmodern Conditions Volume 2 hosted by the co-editors Murray Stein and Thomas Arzt. In this webinar they will bring in Ann Chia-Yi Li to speak about her chapter titled “The Receptive and the Creative: Jung’s Red Book for our Time in Light of Daoist Alchemy.” Join us on November 7th as we discuss the impact of Daoist Alchemy on Jung’s Red Book.
Science has created an immense horizon and a huge extension of human life. It has developed in the way of the Yang principle of The Creative Hexagram—a strong creative action. And scientists do further research with the same perseverance, like the primal force—“strong and untiring.”
While Jung was intensively working on his Red Book, he realized that the spirit of his time was concerned mostly with “the use and value” in physical life. The power of rationalism had the upper hand:
“…our ruler is the spirit of this time, which rules and leads in us all. It is the general spirit in which we think and act today. He is of frightful power, since he has brought immeasurable good to this world and fascinated men with unbelievable pleasure. He is bejewelled with the most beautiful heroic virtue, and wants to drive men up to the brightest solar heights, in everlasting ascent.”
In our time, science and technology count more than spirituality. Their development seems to be guiding us to a new way of life in which people interact more with technology than directly with people. Life is being directed to a mode of being that is bright, clear, precise, certain, concrete, stable, and ordered. This gives an impression that in our modern time “… thunder is no longer the voice of a god, nor is lightning his avenging missile. No river contains a spirit, no tree means a man’s life, no snake is the embodiment of wisdom, and no mountain still harbours a great demon,” just as Jung anticipated. Join us on November 7th as we discuss the impact of Daoist Alchemy on Jung’s Red Book.
Since its publication in 2009, The Red Book: Liber Novus by C.G. Jung has been a huge success in commercial terms and in gaining general recognition as a significant work of artistic value and of historical interest. The Red Book has been translated into numerous languages; papers and books have been written about it; conferences and seminars have been held to focus on many aspects of its historical and psychological content. Now the time has come to look at it as a work containing immense value for guiding people forward in our time, postmodernity. To that purpose, this webinar series will feature speakers who will address this topic from several different perspectives.
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| Ann Chia-Yi Li, M.A., is originally from Taiwan, where she studied Chinese Literature and English Literature. She is a graduate of ISAP Zurich, and maintains a private practice in Zurich. Ann has served in ISAP Program Committee since 2013, and initiated International MuShuei.Jung Conference and Retreat in Taiwan since 2015. Her latest project is to cofound a systematic Jungian study program through the establishment of Analytical Psychology School SG in Singapore in 2016. Her special interests are Daoist alchemy, The Red Book, culture and trauma, active imagination and Zen meditation.
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Abraxas: Then and Now
Featuring J. Gary Sparks
Recorded Video Ready
The Asheville Jung Center is very pleased to announce that the recording is ready for our recent webinar about the new book Jung’s Red Book for Our Time: Searching for Soul under Postmodern Conditions Volume 2 hosted by the co-editors Murray Stein and Thomas Arzt. In this webinar they bring in J. Gary Sparks to speak about his chapter titled Abraxas: Then and Now. The ancient Gnostic god Abraxas has a message for the 20th and 21st centuries. Although violence accompanies the return of Abraxas, the destruction he personifies paradoxically holds the possibility of transformation.
The god plays a significant role in Jung’s Red Book. Jung further discusses Abraxas in the visions of a female patient 20 years later. An additional 30 years place the name Abraxas on the cover of an LP album by the same name recorded by guitarist Carlos Santana, and the album’s artwork is psychologically important. After nearly another 50 years, a series of three recent dreams of a professional man in the second half of life suggestively portrays the Gnostic god. At each point in the analysis to follow, the dreams show the practical and enduring relevance of Abraxas as he appeared to Jung first in his Red Book and subsequently continued to absorb him throughout his life. Abraxas, and all he portends, would not leave Jung alone over his lifetime, nor will the god excuse himself from our time—as three present-day dreams confirm. |
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Where Soul Meets Matter: Clinical and Social Applications of Jungian Sandplay Therapy
The theme of this book, which is part of the 2018 Zurich Lecture Series, is the psyche’s astonishing capacity and determination to regulate itself by creating images and narratives as soon as a free and protected space for expression is provided. This is true for individuals—children and adults—who struggle with adverse experiences as well as for those who seek a deeper meaning in life. This capacity for psychic self‐regulation becomes clearly visible and tangible in the well-known therapeutic practice of sandplay.
Eva Pattis Zoja describes two different applications of sandplay that she has developed over the course of two decades. They are oriented towards two different target groups and expand the same basic principles in two different directions.
While the hands explore the sand’s consistency, its smoothness, and its readiness to respond to the slightest touch, all sorts of perceptions and emotions go through the clients’ state of mind, and they cannot say whether they came from inside or out. It appears to be a circular process, a very subtle but also very persistent and concrete dialogue between the inner and outer worlds, between body and psyche, and more generally, between psyche and matter.
The author explores the psyche’s astonishing capacity and determination to regulate itself by creating images and narratives as soon as a free and protected space for expression is provided. A variety of examples from analytic practice with adults and from psychosocial projects with children in vulnerable situations illustrate how sandplay can be used in different therapeutic settings.
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The Bible as Dream Seminar
Recorded Video Available
Dr. Murray Stein’s new book, The Bible as Dream: A Jungian Interpretation, looks at the Bible as a Jungian analyst would a long dream series in which a personality and a self are emerging and coming into time and space from out of the depths of the unconscious. The Bible is the story of a collective individuation process. On September 12th we hosted a live lecture where Dr. Stein reviews his work. The recording is now available for purchase and viewing.
The lectures in this book are a work of respectful and loving interpretation. The Bible presents a world elaborated with reference to a specific God image. As the mythographer Karl Kerenyi puts it in writing about the Greek gods and goddesses, every god and every goddess constitutes a world. So it is too with the biblical God. The biblical world is the visionary product of a particular people, the ancient Hebrews and the early Christians, who delved deeply into their God image and pulled from it the multitude of perspectives, rules for life, spiritual practices, and practical implications that all together created the tapestry that we find depicted in the canonical Bible. Yahweh is the heart and soul of this world, its creator, sustainer, and destroyer. The Bible is a dream that tells the story of how this world was brought into being in space and time and what it means. |
| | | Bridging West and East: C.G. Jung and Richard Wilhelm, A Fateful Relationship
In his Memorial Address for Richard Wilhelm in 1930, C.G. Jung recognized that his friend’s work had had a major effect on him: “… [from Wilhelm] the spark leapt across and kindled a light that was to become for me one of the most significant events of my life” (CW 15, para. 74). Further: “Indeed, I feel myself so very much enriched by him that it seems to me as if I had received more from him than from any other man” (ibid., para. 96). Jung’s great and abiding interest in Chinese thought was due to its reliance on the principle of synchronicity rather than causality, which became clear to him largely because of the work of Wilhelm, whom he met at the School of Wisdom in Darmstadt, Germany and immediately recognized as a kindred spirit. Jung’s fascination with the I Ching was fanned by Wilhelm’s translation of the Chinese classic, which appeared in German in the 1920’s. Largely because of Jung’s encouragement, the book was brilliantly translated into English by Cary Baynes, and with Jung’s endorsement and Foreword it became a worldwide best seller in the 1960’s. Jung felt that the West had much to learn from ancient Chinese wisdom, and he regarded Wilhelm and himself as partners in a mission: “Fate seems to have assigned us the role of being two pillars that support the weight of the bridge between East and West.”
Now, some eighty-two years after Wilhelm’s death, his filmmaker granddaughter, Bettina Wilhelm, has released a masterful documentary about his life and work. Wilhelm was a Christian missionary to China from 1899 to 1920, and he confessed that he had never baptized a single Chinese because he felt the mission of Christians was to meet people where they are and minister to their needs, not to convert them to a foreign religion. In fact, Wilhelm fell in love with classical Chinese culture and in addition to the I Ching, translated many other works of Chinese philosophy and religion into German and introduced Jung to ‘The Secret of the Golden Flower’, a meditation manual that sparked Jung’s interest in alchemy as a resource for depth psychology.
In this seminar, Murray Stein presents important information regarding the relationship between Jung and Wilhelm and the significance of Chinese texts on Jung’s thought. Bettina Wilhelm discusses her film and her experiences in creating it (seminar participants are strongly encouraged to view the film before the seminar). Shiuya Sara Liuh, who was born and educated in Taiwan, presents her reflections on “The Secret of the Golden Flower” and Jung’s commentary on this work. All will answer questions from the audience.
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