Magick through Jungian perspective?

[cassianogpaiva]

Hey guys!
Lately, I've been thinking about possible correlations between the symbolic system and Jungian archetypes. I would like to explore this further. Is there a book, article, etc., on this subject? If not, what would you suggest for this endeavor?
Manu thanks!!

 

[morganlefay]

I haven't read this book yet, but from what I know of it, it might have at least some of what you're looking for:

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[Robert Ramsay]

I haven't read this book yet, but from what I know of it, it might have at least some of what you're looking for:

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Yes, this (and possibly the Black Book) are what you should be reading.

But, of course, the most important thing is to be Jung at heart.

 

[cassianogpaiva]

Jung at heart. Love it! haha
Many thanks for the suggestion!

 

[aviaf]

Hey guys!
Lately, I've been thinking about possible correlations between the symbolic system and Jungian archetypes. I would like to explore this further. Is there a book, article, etc., on this subject? If not, what would you suggest for this endeavor?
Manu thanks!!

I’ve spent months at a time reading nothing but Jung, filling notebooks with notes and journals. If you want to explore magick through a Jungian lens, start with Man and His Symbols. It’s the clearest map of how symbols bridge conscious and unconscious, laying out archetypes like Shadow, Anima/Animus, and Self in ways you can apply directly to ritual practice.

Once you’ve got that grounding, move into The Red Book. That’s Jung’s raw visionary work, active imagination sessions where he wrestled with archetypal figures directly. Reading it after Man and His Symbols gives you the framework to decode the chaos, and for magicians it’s like watching Jung perform invocation inside his own psyche. If you want to go even deeper, check out the Black Books. They’re the raw notebooks behind The Red Book, his unfiltered record of visions and archetypal dialogues, closer to a ritual journal than a textbook. Just be warned, none of this is light reading, Jung cracked himself open and recorded visions, dialogues, and paintings in full mythic intensity. It can take months or years, and if you’re anything like me you’ll try it yourself just to see if he’s full of shit. Spoiler, he’s most definitely not! There’s a lot of “what the fuck did I just read” moments, and after trying it on for size some definite “what the fuck just happened” ones too. That’s part of the ride, and I can (and do ) talk about this stuff endlessly with anyone willing to dive in. Maybe I should start a thread on it? I'm sitting in a hospital waiting room, nothing else to do for the next hour and a half... the only reason I haven't already is this is heavy reading and a lot of people know about shadow work and invoke his name, but most people don't actually dive into his work for some reason. Disappointing, but also just makes it fun to explain it to them.

 

[albie]

He was pretty weird. Maybe even crazy. Good lad.

 

[aviaf]

It does not surprise me in the slightest that no one has really said anything since my last post on this topic 2 months ago. Disappointing...
Honestly, the thing people miss when they name‑drop Jung in magical spaces is that his work isn’t just psychology. It’s a usable magical technology if you know how to handle it. The man basically reinvented half of Western occultism from the inside out without ever calling it that.
If you’re a magician, here’s what you can actually do with Jung’s material:

Active Imagination = Invocation without the robes.
Jung wasn’t “visualizing.” He was entering a controlled trance, calling up an archetypal presence, dialoguing with it, and letting it speak back. That’s invocation. That’s pathworking. That’s inner temple work. And he documented the whole thing like a scientist who accidentally wandered into the astral.

Archetypes = the gods you already know, just wearing psychological names.
Shadow, Anima, Wise Old Man, Trickster: these aren’t metaphors. They’re psychic structures with their own gravity. When you work with Odin, Hecate, Hermes, Lucifer, whoever, you’re interacting with an archetype whether you call it that or not. Jung just gives you a map of the terrain.

The Red Book = a magician’s grimoire written by someone who didn’t realize he was writing one.
If you read it with magical eyes, it’s basically a record of initiatory ordeals, inner contacts, ego death cycles, and mythic encounters. It’s messy, raw, and absolutely recognizable if you’ve ever done deep ritual or ordeal work.

The Black Books = the closest thing we have to Jung’s magical diary.
Not polished. Not edited. Just the raw encounters. If you’ve ever kept a ritual journal, you’ll recognize the rhythm instantly.

And the biggest takeaway for magicians:

Jung gives you a way to work with spirits, gods, and inner figures without needing to “believe” in anything.
You can treat them as autonomous psychic intelligences and the results don’t get weaker, they get stronger because you’re speaking the language the unconscious actually listens to.

From a magical perspective, Jung gives you:

1. a map of the inner world
2. a method for contacting it
3. a way to integrate what you find
4. and a framework that keeps you from getting lost in your own symbolism

That’s why I keep coming back to him.
That’s why I filled notebooks.
That’s why I still end up in “what the hell just happened” territory when I use his methods in ritual.
If people actually read Jung instead of just quoting “shadow work” memes, half the magical community would level up overnight.

If anyone shows some interest, I can absolutely start a thread breaking down how to use Jungian techniques in ritual, ordeal, invocation, and identity work. I’ve got time this week, I'm at my cabin at the top of the Ozarks, alone with my dog in the middle of the woods, and can't spend ALL of my time fishing (just most of it, lol the browns are practically jumping in the boat) and this is one of those topics I can talk about until someone physically drags me away from the keyboard.

 

[Beyond Everything]

Jung tried to turn alchemy into a process of psychological healing. Whereas alchemy (in its truest form) is about literally creating an immortal subtle body.

I can't imagine anything more 'harmful' to an esoteric aspirant.

 

[MorganBlack]

Damn, just seeing this. Jung is rad. My two cents, and where I 'put' Jung.

I agree with ya'll the psychology-only interpretation of his work is given too much air time by boring people trying to tame him, and he is far more of a magician than people give him credit for. In my Neoplatonic view he maps how human psychology shapes the World Soul - how our software becomes externalized hardware.

I draw from Bernardo Kastrup and Patrick Harpur here. If, as Kastrup argues, reality is essentially 'transpersonal mind' and we are all just 'dissociated alters' of that one mind, then the archetypes aren't just private thoughts, they are the underlying patterns of the Universe's own psyche. As Harpur would say, we live in the Anima Mundi (World Soul). We’ve forgotten that the world is a 'Daimonic' place, a middle realm where mind and matter are the same substance.

For example: Astrology is the planets as Archetypes driving Synchronicity. Even if you don't 'believe' in it, the often patterns of your life events unfold according to the seemingly silly, arbitrary arrangement of planets. That is humanity - all of us - warping reality based on our instinctual human patterns over a very very long time. The planets reflect us as we turned them into gods with human qualities, as expressions of our humaness, our concerns, our, our instincts and sense of things ... and so they are that... is a very 'real' way. But they are both in us and outside us. Well, just as we are. In a Kastrupian-to-Neoplatonic sense, the planets , while now being 'gods,' are also external indicators of our very very deep process, shared by us all in external-internal state of the One. We have already colonized the stars with ourselves.

 

[Jsinclair]

Try this and work your way outwards and inwards as your Genius inspires and guides.

Book – PDF - Soror Syrinx - The Halo and the Hollow: Duality of Sacred and Void

The Halo and the Hollow is a transformative self-help workbook that invites you to journey into the depths of your psyche. Drawing upon the archetypal wisdom of Carl Jung and the esoteric insights of Aleister Crowley, this guide illuminates the forces that shape us—the luminous drives that lift...

wizardforums.com

 

[AlfrunGrima]

If anyone shows some interest, I can absolutely start a thread breaking down how to use Jungian techniques in ritual, ordeal, invocation, and identity work. I’ve got time this week, I'm at my cabin at the top of the Ozarks, alone with my dog in the middle of the woods, and can't spend ALL of my time fishing (just most of it, lol the browns are practically jumping in the boat) and this is one of those topics I can talk about until someone physically drags me away from the kekeyboard.y

Yes please, I would like to discover more. I am quite intuitive in my kind of craft/magic/path (however I work in a very structured way) but a Jungian way of working is something I don't know much about. It is quite possible that my WoW covers the same things, but it is always good to study another map too.

 

[aviaf]

Jung tried to turn alchemy into a process of psychological healing. Whereas alchemy (in its truest form) is about literally creating an immortal subtle body.

I can't imagine anything more 'harmful' to an esoteric aspirant.

Do you ever have a positive view on a topic being discussed on WF, or are you here just to try to stir shit by disagreeing with every stance made in any Post topic? Honestly, I don't care, I'll simply just ignore your posts from now on.

Post automatically merged: Thursday at 7:15 PM

Damn, just seeing this. Jung is rad. My two cents, and where I 'put' Jung.

I agree with ya'll the psychology-only interpretation of his work is given too much air time by boring people trying to tame him, and he is far more of a magician than people give him credit for. In my Neoplatonic view he maps how human psychology shapes the World Soul - how our software becomes externalized hardware.

I draw from Bernardo Kastrup and Patrick Harpur here. If, as Kastrup argues, reality is essentially 'transpersonal mind' and we are all just 'dissociated alters' of that one mind, then the archetypes aren't just private thoughts, they are the underlying patterns of the Universe's own psyche. As Harpur would say, we live in the Anima Mundi (World Soul). We’ve forgotten that the world is a 'Daimonic' place, a middle realm where mind and matter are the same substance.

For example: Astrology is the planets as Archetypes driving Synchronicity. Even if you don't 'believe' in it, the often patterns of your life events unfold according to the seemingly silly, arbitrary arrangement of planets. That is humanity - all of us - warping reality based on our instinctual human patterns over a very very long time. The planets reflect us as we turned them into gods with human qualities, as expressions of our humaness, our concerns, our, our instincts and sense of things ... and so they are that... is a very 'real' way. But they are both in us and outside us. Well, just as we are. In a Kastrupian-to-Neoplatonic sense, the planets , while now being 'gods,' are also external indicators of our very very deep process, shared by us all in external-internal state of the One. We have already colonized the stars with ourselves.

This is exactly the kind of angle I was hoping would show up in this thread. You’re hitting on something most people miss: Jung wasn’t trying to shrink magic down to psychology, he was trying to give psychology a vocabulary big enough to describe magic. The Neoplatonic framing fits him like a glove. When you talk about the Anima Mundi, the daimonic middle realm, the psyche externalizing itself into the “hardware” of the world. That’s the same territory Jung was mapping through Active Imagination and archetypal engagement. He just used the language of his era.

Where I’ve found the real traction is treating these ideas not just as metaphysics, but as techniques.

If the world is daimonic, then Active Imagination isn’t visualization, it’s entering the field. If archetypes are the deep patterns of the One Mind, then invocation is a way of aligning with those patterns. If the planets are mirrors of our long-term psychic imprinting, then astrology becomes a diagnostic tool for synchronicity, not a belief system.

In other words:
Jung gives you the map.
Neoplatonism gives you the cosmology.
Magical practice gives you the method.

And when all three line up, the whole thing stops being theory and becomes a working interface with the World Soul.

 

[cassianogpaiva]

It does not surprise me in the slightest that no one has really said anything since my last post on this topic 2 months ago. Disappointing...
Honestly, the thing people miss when they name‑drop Jung in magical spaces is that his work isn’t just psychology. It’s a usable magical technology if you know how to handle it. The man basically reinvented half of Western occultism from the inside out without ever calling it that.
If you’re a magician, here’s what you can actually do with Jung’s material:

Active Imagination = Invocation without the robes.
Jung wasn’t “visualizing.” He was entering a controlled trance, calling up an archetypal presence, dialoguing with it, and letting it speak back. That’s invocation. That’s pathworking. That’s inner temple work. And he documented the whole thing like a scientist who accidentally wandered into the astral.

Archetypes = the gods you already know, just wearing psychological names.
Shadow, Anima, Wise Old Man, Trickster: these aren’t metaphors. They’re psychic structures with their own gravity. When you work with Odin, Hecate, Hermes, Lucifer, whoever, you’re interacting with an archetype whether you call it that or not. Jung just gives you a map of the terrain.

The Red Book = a magician’s grimoire written by someone who didn’t realize he was writing one.
If you read it with magical eyes, it’s basically a record of initiatory ordeals, inner contacts, ego death cycles, and mythic encounters. It’s messy, raw, and absolutely recognizable if you’ve ever done deep ritual or ordeal work.

The Black Books = the closest thing we have to Jung’s magical diary.
Not polished. Not edited. Just the raw encounters. If you’ve ever kept a ritual journal, you’ll recognize the rhythm instantly.

And the biggest takeaway for magicians:

Jung gives you a way to work with spirits, gods, and inner figures without needing to “believe” in anything.
You can treat them as autonomous psychic intelligences and the results don’t get weaker, they get stronger because you’re speaking the language the unconscious actually listens to.

From a magical perspective, Jung gives you:

1. a map of the inner world
2. a method for contacting it
3. a way to integrate what you find
4. and a framework that keeps you from getting lost in your own symbolism

That’s why I keep coming back to him.
That’s why I filled notebooks.
That’s why I still end up in “what the hell just happened” territory when I use his methods in ritual.
If people actually read Jung instead of just quoting “shadow work” memes, half the magical community would level up overnight.

If anyone shows some interest, I can absolutely start a thread breaking down how to use Jungian techniques in ritual, ordeal, invocation, and identity work. I’ve got time this week, I'm at my cabin at the top of the Ozarks, alone with my dog in the middle of the woods, and can't spend ALL of my time fishing (just most of it, lol the browns are practically jumping in the boat) and this is one of those topics I can talk about until someone physically drags me away from the keyboard.

Ac

It does not surprise me in the slightest that no one has really said anything since my last post on this topic 2 months ago. Disappointing...
Honestly, the thing people miss when they name‑drop Jung in magical spaces is that his work isn’t just psychology. It’s a usable magical technology if you know how to handle it. The man basically reinvented half of Western occultism from the inside out without ever calling it that.
If you’re a magician, here’s what you can actually do with Jung’s material:

Active Imagination = Invocation without the robes.
Jung wasn’t “visualizing.” He was entering a controlled trance, calling up an archetypal presence, dialoguing with it, and letting it speak back. That’s invocation. That’s pathworking. That’s inner temple work. And he documented the whole thing like a scientist who accidentally wandered into the astral.

Archetypes = the gods you already know, just wearing psychological names.
Shadow, Anima, Wise Old Man, Trickster: these aren’t metaphors. They’re psychic structures with their own gravity. When you work with Odin, Hecate, Hermes, Lucifer, whoever, you’re interacting with an archetype whether you call it that or not. Jung just gives you a map of the terrain.

The Red Book = a magician’s grimoire written by someone who didn’t realize he was writing one.
If you read it with magical eyes, it’s basically a record of initiatory ordeals, inner contacts, ego death cycles, and mythic encounters. It’s messy, raw, and absolutely recognizable if you’ve ever done deep ritual or ordeal work.

The Black Books = the closest thing we have to Jung’s magical diary.
Not polished. Not edited. Just the raw encounters. If you’ve ever kept a ritual journal, you’ll recognize the rhythm instantly.

And the biggest takeaway for magicians:

Jung gives you a way to work with spirits, gods, and inner figures without needing to “believe” in anything.
You can treat them as autonomous psychic intelligences and the results don’t get weaker, they get stronger because you’re speaking the language the unconscious actually listens to.

From a magical perspective, Jung gives you:

1. a map of the inner world
2. a method for contacting it
3. a way to integrate what you find
4. and a framework that keeps you from getting lost in your own symbolism

That’s why I keep coming back to him.
That’s why I filled notebooks.
That’s why I still end up in “what the hell just happened” territory when I use his methods in ritual.
If people actually read Jung instead of just quoting “shadow work” memes, half the magical community would level up overnight.

If anyone shows some interest, I can absolutely start a thread breaking down how to use Jungian techniques in ritual, ordeal, invocation, and identity work. I’ve got time this week, I'm at my cabin at the top of the Ozarks, alone with my dog in the middle of the woods, and can't spend ALL of my time fishing (just most of it, lol the browns are practically jumping in the boat) and this is one of those topics I can talk about until someone physically drags me away from the keyboard.

To be honest, after opening this post and seeing the high caliber of the responses I've received, I’ve realized that I don't even have the necessary foundation—yet—to engage in an exchange of ideas that would be truly productive for everyone involved. On the other hand, I’ve been researching and diving deeper into Jung’s work, though I still can't tie it all together in a way that makes logical sense. I think I need much more time studying before I can participate in a healthy debate on the subject. But I’ll keep at it!

That said, I think it would be REALLY cool if you could start a new thread discussing how Jung can indeed be used within a magical context! That would be amazing!

 

[BBBB]

If anyone shows some interest, I can absolutely start a thread breaking down how to use Jungian techniques in ritual, ordeal, invocation, and identity work. I’ve got time this week, I'm at my cabin at the top of the Ozarks, alone with my dog in the middle of the woods, and can't spend ALL of my time fishing (just most of it, lol the browns are practically jumping in the boat) and this is one of those topics I can talk about until someone physically drags me away from the keyboard.

Let loose the dogs of Hekate) I'm interested.

 

[aviaf]

Let loose the dogs of Hekate) I'm interested.

Of course you are. That’s 3 that have indicated interest, and there are others engaging this thread that probably would be as well. I was contemplating doing something on this topic for the Council Discord anyway, then porting parts of it here. I’ve already handed out the essential keys in my most previous post, and I’ll say this much more as a hint :
RAW, Discordianism, and the Chaos Current have been using Jung's machinery from the beginning. They just wrapped it in jokes, sigils, and sideways myth so people wouldn’t realize what they were handling. Once you see the overlap, the whole thing snaps into focus.
OK... I will start something about this. Probably a journal.

 

[Ludwig46692]

Hey guys!
Lately, I've been thinking about possible correlations between the symbolic system and Jungian archetypes. I would like to explore this further. Is there a book, article, etc., on this subject? If not, what would you suggest for this endeavor?
Manu thanks!!

It's a hard topic for me, I like the way he approaches the discussion but at the same time I feel most of what he tries to say is filtered to not sound too crazy, it's almost like he didn't want the academy to criticise him on that matter (which makes sense actually, let's be real)

One thing that bothers me a lot is how hard it is to rationalize some of the knowledge, in fact the idea of sincronicity is a good example of that, it's something that doesn't make sense until it happens and sound ridiculous after it ends, but for some reason in that especific moment clicks.

I don't know how much you like to dive on those topics but I believe Heidegger's research on existence (Dasein) helps a lot.

To me he was the guy that finally broke the resistance and made clear that there's WAY more to discuss on the metaphysical field than the average Joe believes.

 

[Kepler]

If anyone shows some interest, I can absolutely start a thread breaking down how to use Jungian techniques in ritual, ordeal, invocation, and identity work.

+1

Neoplatonism gives you the cosmology.

How that cosmology is adapted to Jung and current natural science is intriguing.


The Red Book would've been really helpful for me about 20 years ago. I didn't get a copy until a couple years ago. Even the few sections I read have helped to disentangle confusion about the nature of spiritual visions caused by concurrency at different levels of psychic engagement. Finding and correcting conflicts between philosophy and natural science reducing the dissonance with reality caused by rectifying visionary experience.

 

[LilPersefone]

Do you ever have a positive view on a topic being discussed on WF, or are you here just to try to stir shit by disagreeing with every stance made in any Post topic? Honestly, I don't care, I'll simply just ignore your posts from now on.

Post automatically merged: Thursday at 7:15 PM

This is exactly the kind of angle I was hoping would show up in this thread. You’re hitting on something most people miss: Jung wasn’t trying to shrink magic down to psychology, he was trying to give psychology a vocabulary big enough to describe magic. The Neoplatonic framing fits him like a glove. When you talk about the Anima Mundi, the daimonic middle realm, the psyche externalizing itself into the “hardware” of the world. That’s the same territory Jung was mapping through Active Imagination and archetypal engagement. He just used the language of his era.

Where I’ve found the real traction is treating these ideas not just as metaphysics, but as techniques.

If the world is daimonic, then Active Imagination isn’t visualization, it’s entering the field. If archetypes are the deep patterns of the One Mind, then invocation is a way of aligning with those patterns. If the planets are mirrors of our long-term psychic imprinting, then astrology becomes a diagnostic tool for synchronicity, not a belief system.

In other words:
Jung gives you the map.
Neoplatonism gives you the cosmology.
Magical practice gives you the method.

And when all three line up, the whole thing stops being theory and becomes a working interface with the World Soul.

I'm newish here but this is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for as a longtime student of Jung, as a dreamwalker/astral traveler, and as a channel. Bring it.

There is always the rule that everyone in any esoteric forum should know by heart: if it doesn't resonate for you, then walk away. Anyone who thinks in a binary way about anything (as in, "it's either my way or the highway") is missing the point of forums like this. I wouldn't give any naysayers another second of your attention. They have work to do but it's not for us to lead them.

 

[Van Horne]

From a magical perspective, Jung gives you:

1. a map of the inner world
2. a method for contacting it
3. a way to integrate what you find
4. and a framework that keeps you from getting lost in your own symbolism

Thanks for your detailed remarks. I'm growing more and more fond of the archetype concept in my personal work. I have the feeling some people are afraid Jung's ideas turn magick into demystified academic psychology. I feel quite contrary. Too me it's more a reassurance about personal ideas and visions. The challenge is - as you wrote - to find a system within the symbols and not getting lost.

 

[IllusiveOwl]

There is a lengthy section of The Red Book where he speaks with a magician, accepts the power of magic, and recognizes it as ordo ab chao. Can't get more direct than that. He has a Chaos Magician perspective on magic.