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.
