All Booked Up!!

I've been on an insane book-buying spree. All set up with long-term reading material. If you click to enlarge the picture you should be able to see all the titles - if not you can download it and blow it up on your computer. Or I'll just grit my teeth and type up the entire list here:

• Ego and Archetype - Edward Edinger
• The Courage to Create - Rollo May
• Carl Jung - (Critical Lives) - Paul Bishop
• The Reader's Digest Bible, Large-Type Edition *(see note below)
• A History of Religious Ideas vol 1 & 2 - Mircea Eliade
• The Eternal Drama: The Inner Meaning of Greek Mythology - Edinger
• Reading Goethe @ Midlife - Bishop
• Encounter With the Self: Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job - Edinger
• Melville's Moby-Dick: An American Nekyia - Edinger
• The Bible and the Psyche - Edinger
• Jungian Dream Interpretation - James A Hall
• Border Crossings: Carlos Castaneda's Path of Knowledge - Donald Lee Williams
• Transformation of the God-Image - Edinger
• The Secret Raven: Conflict and Transformation - Daryl Sharp
• The Scapegoat Complex: Shadow and Guilt - Sylvia Brinton Perera
• The Mysterium Lectures - Edinger
• Jung and Tarot - Sallie Nichols
• Meeting the Shadow - Connie Zweig (editor)
• Answer to Job - CG Jung 
• Becoming: An Introduction to Jung's Concept of Individuation - Deldon Anne McNeely
• Existential Psychotherapy - Irvin D Yalom
• The Ultimate Guide to Tarot - Liz Dean

*Still waiting on the first volume of the Bible to come in - they sent me another copy of vol 2 by mistake. 

Oops - looking back I see I had already shown 3 of these books in the last book-related post. My bad! With this many coming in it's hard to keep track. I should have checked the blog before snapping the pic. 

I've now made most of the listings into links. I didn't just buy them full-price but found decent used copies. In the case of Existential Psychotherapy I found it cheaper on eBay than on Amazon. I didn't post a link to the Reader's Digest Bible because there isn't a listing on Amazon or elsewhere I could find that really explains what it is. I learned about it from Jordan Peterson - it's essentially had the repetitions edited out and things explained in a way that's understandable to a modern readership. Also it reads like a story - straight through rather than being broken up into numbered chapter and verse. I think it will be much easier to understand - hopefully anyway. The other versions can be pretty incomprehensible. 

I also got myself a nice centennial Smith-Waite Tarot Deck, arrayed here on top of the Jung and Tarot book. In the case of the Tarot cards and the Bible, it's important to note that they are not to be taken literally. For Jungian purposes the Tarot is not for telling the future - rather it's a complex and extremely useful set of symbols that can be used to explore and come to an understanding of the contents of the human psyche, in the same way dream symbolism can. Same for the Bible. In fact Jung stated that before science switched our understanding of the world to one based on reductive materialism and practicality, there came the great age of Religions and Mythology. This was a time when humankind was very unconscious and had a strong tendency to project the contents of their psyche out onto the stars (as constellations to be divined through Astrology), into the Heavens (Religion), and into the Mysteries of Matter (Alchemy, soon to transmute into Chemistry).

There had already been thorough studies into comparative religion and comparative mythology (finding similarities between various ones all around the world), but Jung discovered WHY all the similarities. In his own words (well - loosely - don't feel like looking up exact wording), in the 15th century God fell out of the sky and into the human psyche. For modern people, it's vitally important to understand religion and mythology, otherwise you can fall prey to nihilistic despair.

For example, dreams that seem terrifying can suddenly reveal themselves to be profoundly healing and transformative if you have some knowledge of creation myths. Bloody, violent dismemberments - especially of giants or figures that refuse to die - often represent the killing of the old god who needs to be destroyed and whose body gives birth to the new world, in which the new god can grow and prosper. This is actually a very positive and reassuring dream, and it's only through an understanding of mythological symbols that it can be understood properly. So I'll be filling my head with as much as I can stuff in there.

And my most recent Kindle purchases: