The sensational question that is often asked by Christians when considering Carl Jung is:

Was he communing with demons?

And I get it, he describes his conversations with the character Philemon in his book Memories, Dreams, Reflections saying, “It was he who spoke, not I.” The problem is he also states, “At times he seemed to me quite real.” With Jung’s unique psychologized mysticism, it is difficult to determine exactly what this figure was. I really don’t think we can conclude either way.

Regardless, I think the real question which underlies this is:

Can we listen to anything he proposes which came out of these visions?

In this episode, I trace several accounts of demon activity described in scripture to argue that the boring and perhaps frustrating truth is that we need to test the spirits against the Word of God.

I then begin to do just that by walking through the Liber Primus section of The Red Book including:

* The spirit of the depths vs. the spirit of the times

* The soul as a “self-existing being”

* The murder of the hero, and Jung’s claim that Christ descended into hell and became the Antichrist

* Elijah and Salome, and the claim that the holy and unholy are one

Stay tuned for part two which will cover Liber Segundus and The Scrutinies.

My episode which describes the levels of explanation approach to spiritual and psychological phenomena:

A free pdf of The Red Book: https://archive.org/details/carl-gustav-jung-the-red-book-liber-novu

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Music by Douglas Hageman https://doughageman.bandcamp.com/