An Introduction to Jung and Esoteric Psychology
The unconscious, the archetypes, and the psychology of the mysteries.
Around 1900 a new science of the mind began to take religious and esoteric experience seriously. William James studied mystical states; F. W. H. Myers explored the “subliminal self”; and Carl Gustav Jung built a psychology in which myth, symbol and alchemy became maps of the psyche.
This guide introduces that current and suggests how to read its classics alongside the esoteric sources they interpret.
What It Is
Jung proposed a collective unconscious populated by archetypes, universal patterns that surface in dreams, myths and religious symbols. The work of psychological growth, which he called individuation, echoes the stages of the alchemical opus.
Earlier, James’s Varieties of Religious Experience and R. M. Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness treated mystical experience as a real psychological phenomenon deserving study.
Why It Matters
Much of the twentieth-century revival of interest in alchemy, Gnosticism, tarot and astrology passed through Jung. His readings are influential and contested; knowing both him and his sources lets you judge them.
Core Texts
Jung and the early psychology of religion, as held in the archive.
A Beginner’s Sequence
Mystical experience
James’s lectures remain the best starting point: humane, empirical and beautifully written.
Expanded awareness
Bucke’s survey of illumination across history. Enthusiastic, and historically important.
Jung’s breakthrough
The 1912 book in which Jung broke with Freud and turned to myth and symbol.
The alchemical source
Read an alchemical text Jung drew on, to see what he saw in it.
Splendor Solis: Alchemical Treatises of Solomon Trismosin
Salomon Trismosin
