Product Description

Jung's last major work, completed in his 81st year, on the synthesis of the opposites in alchemy and psychology.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #170860 in Books
• Published on: 1977-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 430 pages

Review
Truly original and far-ranging in its implications . . . Mysterium Coniunctionis is a splendid capstone to the life work of a master spirit.
(Journal of Analytical Psychology )

Review
Truly original and far-ranging in its implications . . . Mysterium Coniunctionis is a splendid capstone to the life work of a master spirit.

Language Notes
Text: English, German (translation)

Customer Reviews

The Consummate Jung
This is no easy sledding, but for those familiar with Jung's model of the psyche, this is the congealed presentation of the phenomenon of the union of opposites within the Archetypal Self. I avoided this one due to its mystical and forbidding title, but it is the consummate work of Jung, taking ten of the last years of his life to write. Once groping through the dense forest of obscure alchemical references, the reader will be delighted to discover a clearing in the woods when Jung explains the application of alchemical references to the phenomenon of individuation.

Dreamlike & Inexhaustible
Jung seems to write from the dream state; associations interleaved with digressions punctuated by potent and startling images. This is his most satisfying book for me because it has the simplest premise but is also the largest and richest. He stretches out enormously within a limited range, gathering a life-time of inquiry into a writhing basket of conflicting thought. This method illustrates perfectly how deep experience can become when meditated upon and scrutinized and when tangents are whole-heartedly encouraged and darksides allowed to bloom. No need to hop-scotch around the world, just look into the pile of dead ants beneath your radiator and let your mind wander. The conjunction of opposites: perhaps Jung's emblem for the source of life, the alembic, where all intellectual and emotional births occur. Read and reread this book to step through the microcosmic door into unlimited life right where you are.

Transcendental
This is the 3rd & culminating text of Jung's CW trilogy on alchemy (see CW11 Psychology & Alchemy & CW12 Alchemical Studies before reading this one). Jung obviously devoted considerable time & effort into the study of alchemy--because he perceived an amazing parallel with his theories/model of the psyche & the process of individuation. I think it amazed him that the alchemists intuitively evoked such general principles of transcendental alchemy prior to the development of western science--indeed, they were simultaneously immersed in this development such that modern chemistry evolved from it. Oddly, some are now advocating the use of chemicals (drugs) in lieu of psychology--e.g. for schizophrenia. Maybe the tail is wagging the horse? Of course, this is a difficult text. The alchemical series may be the most difficult of Jung's already difficult texts. But, as Jung demonstrated himself, sometimes the way to learn is to just jump in feet first--absorb as you can. Eventually, the material will start to sink in--subconsciously if not consciously. Give it a whirl. This text also has some VERY interesting quotes:

p. 82 "There is something serious in every joke.

p. 125 If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

p. 200 It seems as if Christianity had been from the outset the religion of chronic squabbles, and even now it does everything in its power never to let the squabbles rest. Remarkably enough, it never stops preaching the gospel of neighborly love.

p. 376 The creative mystic was ever a cross for the Church, but it is to him that we own what is best in humanity...'where there is no vision, the people perish...The mystics are channels through which a little knowledge of reality filters down into our human universe of ignorance and illusion: A totally unmystical world would be a world totally blind and insane...the few theocentric saints who exist at any given moment are able in some slight measure to qualify and mitigate the poisons which society generates within itself by its political and economic activities. In the gospel phrase, theocentric saints are the salt which preserves the world from decay.' (quoting Aldous Huxley in Grey Eminence 1943, pp. 98, *296.

p. 487 Fantasies always mean something when they are spontaneous.

p. 519 Never do human beings speculate more, or have more opinions, than about things which they do not understand.

p. 536 Nothing changes anything else without itself being changed." How profound can you get?