Well said. An unfortunate side-effect of this hardcore allegorizing is that it dismisses an alchemist's world view when it does not fit Jung's typology (fully worked out a half-decade before he discovered alchemy). The example I give in the essay on Jung and von Franz is their use of Dorn on imagination, but only the imagination in the individual human being and not the higher counterpart that is imagining that being. Von Franz goes out of her way to assure her audience that Dorn does not really believe there is a celestial or super celestial body corresponding to "the star in man" (the famous Paracelsian description of imagination).
The Swiss Traditionalist Titus Burckhardt has an interesting essay on Jung and some other modern esotericists in "The Mirror of the Intellect," reprinted in Jacob Needleman's "Sword of Gnosis." He complains about Jung's "use--or rather his usurpation--of the term 'archetype'." By this he means Jung's use of the word to refer to psychic content without the spiritual origin. Burckhardt's argument is not unanswerable, and perhaps a follower of James Hillman's "archetypal psychology" has done that, but, if so, I am not aware of it.Last edited on Mon Dec 24th, 2012 05:21 pm by Tom Willard
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