Magic can be viewed as intentional engagement with what Jung called synchronicity. It is closely related to a mythological worldview, which recognizes a grand narrative supraordinate to everyday life. Although we cannot know it in its entirety, it opens the possibility of encountering a deeper reality and quality of knowing. We experience it as magic.

In this week’s episode we explore esoteric ritual with Jungian analyst and academic JOHN WHITE. Responsible practitioners of ritual magic understand that it demands deep inner work that comes at a cost. Magic involves alignment with the subtle but substantial energies the ancients called gods. Approached without respect, humility, and guidance the encounter can be wounding.

There is a kind of magic in the psychoanalytic consulting room. A client may come to an analyst with a fundamental desire they’ve been unable to attain or even define. The work of the therapy can uncover unconscious ambivalence and resistance. When engaged, it can vanish - by magic.

We can also understand magic as something to practice every day by relating to the unconscious and the Self. Those who do this with devotion and intention are consummate magicians able to steer their life’s path toward wholeness.

Visit our website to read today’s dream and find an extensive list of recommended reading on the topics covered.

Follow Up

Visit John White’s website or his academic page.

Take a look at ⁠This Jungian Life Dream School⁠, our online course in Jungian dream analysis.

⁠Send a dream⁠ for us to analyze on the show

Follow This Jungian Life on ⁠Instagram

The wild man is an enduring archetypal figure worldwide, from Enkidu in Gilgamesh, to the Greek god Pan (worshipped in glens and woods), the Green Man in England, and Bigfoot and the Sasquatch in the US.

Today’s guest, Jungian analyst Mike Box, has long-standing interest in this archetype and in male psychology, reflected in the 8-foot wild man statue he keeps in his waiting room.

The archetype of the wild man compensates for a currently impoverished view of the masculine: stoicism and endurance without emotional expression or self-disclosure. In striving to conform to this cultural ideal, many men disown vital aspects of themselves and find themselves feeling lost, diminished and disconnected.

For some, the wild man archetype constellates negatively, emerging in dangerous or reckless behavior. When engaged consciously, however, the wild man can bring back what has been pushed out of awareness, much as the wild woman does in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves.

In Robert Bly’s Iron John, the wild man initiates a young prince into the parts of himself that have been exiled in service of cultural norms. Allowing ourselves to experience our own wildness, as imaged by Bigfoot’s ability to live in nature, can restore us to a more whole version of ourselves.

Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention.

Connect With This Jungian Life

Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis.

⁠Send a dream⁠⁠⁠ for us to analyze on the show

Watch bonus mini-episodes on our ⁠Patreon⁠

Follow This Jungian Life on ⁠⁠⁠Instagram

Are we living through a tech-driven collapse of the ecology of mind? In his new book, Jung vs. Borg, author, psychologist and Jungian scholar GLEN SLATER Ph.D suggests that industrial disruption of the outer world is now being followed by a post-industrial disruption of the inner world.

Yet, there is hope. Much depends on our capacity to remain conscious of the effect each stage of innovation has on the psyche and on the social and cultural changes that will follow. Becoming conscious of the non-neutral operation of algorithms and big tech’s focus on profit over people is crucial, for example.

We can also look to Jungian psychology for a countercultural turn toward the deeply human and the sacred. We can seek out connection to spirit and place, to counteract life in a world that can feel mostly transactional and exploitative. What’s required is a “guerrilla operation” to redirect the technological juggernaut, by maintaining a symbolic life, working with our dreams and honoring art, history and culture, not just science and technology.

Glen Slater, Ph.D. is the author of Jung vs Borg: Finding the Deeply Human in a Posthuman Age. For the past 25 years he has taught in the areas of depth psychology and mythological studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Glen is also the editor of the third volume of James Hillman’s Uniform Edition, Senex and Puer (2005), and co-editor of the essay collection, Varieties of Mythic Experience (2007).

Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention.

Connect With This Jungian Life

Download our free ⁠⁠Dream Recall Meditation Guide⁠⁠

Send a dream⁠⁠ for us to analyze on the show

Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon

Follow This Jungian Life on ⁠⁠Instagram