E22 The Secret of the Golden Flower with Jason Smith

2024-04-21

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The Secret of the Golden Flower is a Taoist text on inner alchemy that landed in Jung's hands in the late 1920s. It was the sinologist and Christian missionary in China, Richard Wilhelm who sent the text to Jung for a commentary. It's hard to overestimate the importance this text had on Jung and his work. Reading this text made him abandon his work on the Red Book and shift his focus outside to the comparative studies of the individuation process. Especially interesting for this podcast is that it's in Jung's commentary of the...

The Secret of the Golden Flower is a Taoist text on inner alchemy that landed in Jung's hands in the late 1920s. It was the sinologist and Christian missionary in China, Richard Wilhelm who sent the text to Jung for a commentary.

It's hard to overestimate the importance this text had on Jung and his work. Reading this text made him abandon his work on the Red Book and shift his focus outside to the comparative studies of the individuation process. Especially interesting for this podcast is that it's in Jung's commentary of the text that he most clearly outlines his rendering of the Imitatio Christi.

I invited Jason Smith, host of the podcast Digital Jung, and author of Religious But Not Religious: Living a Symbolic Life, back to the podcast to discuss this important work of literature, Jung's comments on it, and what we can learn from it today.

Music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: "Hard Sell" by Ketsa.

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