Welcome to Gatherings, a Sophia Cycles podcast where we talk about books, the kinds of books I regularly quote from on social media. I'm Bea Gonzalez and my co-host is Carly Miko Bess. All the music on the podcast is by Jay Redesberger. Let's jump in. So hello, Carly from Madrid. How are you doing? Hello, Bea. Fine. How are you doing? I'm doing fine. I love your city. As you know, it's one of my favorite, if not the favorite cities in the world.
So I'm kind of envious you're sitting there right now, but I'm very happy that Zoom allows us to speak to each other across the ocean. So today, Carly, what we're going to talk about is something, well, we're going to talk about always books because, I think the reason I asked you to, well, I know the reason I asked you to jump on and co-host this with me is out of all the group members I have, you are by far the craziest around books.
You're like me. And so the first question before we even get started, Carly, admit this, how many books do you currently have on the go? Oh my God. That question is hard to answer. I've actually lost track. I think I tried to make a list at some point last year. I'm not sure when. And I'm still reading through a lot of those because that's the thing. I grab one. I don't know. When I was younger, I would finish almost every book I picked up, although I did read much more fiction.
Nowadays, I just kind of jump from one subject to the next. One book kind of leads to another, and then you get lost in that other subject. And so, yeah, I probably have more than 20 books that I'm currently reading more. That is exactly where I'm with you as well. And I think that's a nonfiction issue. And we read the footnotes, I think, you and I, right? That's part of it.
So you'll have a reference to a book. And I'm always worried if I don't search that book out immediately, I won't find it later. So I immediately run and I order it wherever I can. I tend to try to get a lot of electronic books because they're easier to post from. Obviously, I post a lot of these quotes on social media. But anyway, I find it. And then even if I'm not going to read it, then I'll begin it. And so then I go back and forth depending where I am.
I think the sign of a person, Gerson Campbell talked about this, how his whole reading experience during those five years in the Depression, where he just basically disappeared and read, was doing that, following one book to another, to another. And it's really an interesting way to put things together because you start understanding what influences certain authors are carrying with them. So I think that's one of the reasons I particularly like it, but I think it's just the way we work, right?
So this time, what we're going to do is we're going to look at what book stood out last year, which I know is going to be difficult, but I mean, let's try, right? And why they stood out. I'll let you start with the first book that stood out. And of course, these would be in no particular order. They're just three books that we've chosen. Okay, well, I'll just look at my notes because I have terrible memory for the actual names of the book.
And the first book, actually, I wanted to mention is probably one of the first ones I read last year, I think. Because I think I read it around February. And what's interesting, while the book was fascinating and obviously I loved it, though what's really interesting is how I stumbled on it. Well, actually, it kind of found me in a strange way. And so let me tell you the backstory of how the book found me. I don't know, well, you probably know Susan Cain, who's quiet and bittersweet.
After reading her second book, I think, Bittersweet, I discovered she had this online virtual community on Slack, I think. I think I signed up for the free version of that at the beginning. And for some reason, something in January compelled me. So I started becoming more active on the online forums. And on this post that Susan shared one day, I started reading through the comments. And suddenly I see a woman who, although she is now retired, she was a pastor most of her life.
She suddenly decides she wants to study to get her PhD to be able to become a psychologist. And I'm like, this sounds familiar. And so I read her comment. I was impressed kind of by the story she was sharing. So I replied to her comment and asked her, you know, how did it feel and how did that work out to the middle of your mid-40s? Suddenly make that career path kind of change. And she gave me the most thoughtful, complete, detailed reply.
Like I was kind of in awe of her answer, which was probably a five or six paragraph answer in a forum in the comment section. I read that, and at the end of that comment, she said, oh, and by the way, I've written a book you might enjoy. And so that is the book I'm going to mention now, which is Stepping Out of the Shadows, Naming and Claiming the Medial Woman Today. And the author is Roberta B. Corsing. Tell me why this book impressed you so much. I'm interested.
I haven't read this book, so I've been really interested, yeah. I was actually proud of myself for finding the one book you haven't read. We're sure there are more, Carly, but yes, this one definitely I have not read yet. It's interesting because when I actually started thinking about last year's books and everything that happened to me throughout 2024, I was like, how could I have forgotten that he ran these? Anyway, let me just dive into it.
The book is written, Roberta has this really interesting way of explaining part of a theory that was actually developed by Tony Wolff. back in the day. Tony Wolfe is the collaborator with Carl Jung, had a relationship with Carl Jung, just to interject because maybe some people don't know this, and helped him through that period that he made his descent and which ended up in the Red Book.
Yeah, so Tony Wolfe had this theory that she actually published an essay called Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche, which I discovered thanks to this book. And she basically proposes four archetypes that would be in the feminine psyche. But this particular book is based on one of those archetypes, which would be the medial woman. It is actually interesting to read about that archetype in relationship to the other three.
And Roberta does something really interesting in this book, which is at first she tells you how she came to know of this theory. She also explains that her thesis was actually on this theory. But after she did the thesis, she shares how she had dreams for years. It would kind of point to the fact that she had still more work to do around that thesis.
And that later on, she ended up writing this book. But anyway, what she does in the book, which is really interesting, is kind of like an act of imagination exercise where she actually has this conversation with tony wolf and so tony wolf explains in her own words through the author this whole theory in a very approachable way that is not so academic i thought that was really cool how roberta developed that personal relationship to tony
wolf and i think that's mostly where the book starts so i can roughly delineate the four archetypes. There would be, Two archetypes that are personally related to other people, which would be the mother, which I think we can all understand. And what Tony Wolf called the, I'm not sure how you would pronounce this in English, but the Tyra, or you could consider her the lover.
Those would be the personally related architects. And then you have what she called the impersonally related, which would be, on the one hand, the Amazon, which I think the easiest way to explain that is to say that it's the archetype that is connected maybe to the collective conscious instead of the unconscious. And then you have the medial woman who is connected to the collective unconscious. That's a very broad summary. And so this book is specifically looking at the medial woman.
Right. And so what grabbed me from the beginning, first of all, I was curious, like, what does this medial woman mean? And the beginning of the book, it starts to describe the concept of, I believe you pronounce it, Lyman, L-I-M-E-N, which would be a threshold. A threshold, yeah, liminality, yes. Exactly. Like any liminal space, for example. And so the medial woman basically has, she exists kind of in that medial liminal space.
And so she has, you could say, like one foot in the conscious world, another world, another foot in the unconscious world. So you can see it automatically how that could, that puts her in a position where she could be a bridge of some sort or facilitate passages from one realm to another. I mean, one thing I found thinking about this book is that it's hard to talk about it a lot of times because of the nature of the kind of content you're talking about.
But what's funny is that when I started reading it, Roberta does such a good job of introducing it, describing it, and just the poetic... Narrative i really love how she writes i just felt automatically seen and and like something.
Unrecognized with me finally found a name which is so important in so many in so many ways and so yeah i was like this is one of the few books in the last few years that i read from start to finish and i couldn't i couldn't venture off and because they're rapid good sign good sign yeah that's Great. I really like the idea that it connected to you that deeply. That is why a book stays with us.
By the way, for those interested in Tony Wolff's delineation of these, Gary Bobroff, who runs the Young Academy, is actually just about to start giving a course on this. He's quite an expert on this whole thing. And so I will link it in the show notes because I am also going to be giving a course there. But this is exactly the subject that he's speaking about. But I like that this one is about specifically the medial woman because I think
there is, yeah, it just sounds fascinating. And that in doing that, she used, it sounds like, by using active imagination, she is using that archetype to create something that can connect. This is a little bit of what I think the Jung would tell you to do, because it sounds a little bit like the Red Book. You get into an active imagination exercise that allows you to connect to your inner world, and you create your own version of whatever that looks like.
So it sounds absolutely fascinating. I will definitely put it on the list. So for my first, it's actually a journey that I've been telling all you about in my Sophia group, but. I decided early last year that I wanted to get in touch with the Venus archetype, the feminine, in a way that I hadn't become really acquainted with so deeply before. And I wanted to do a seminar or workshop for my group and the Sophia Collective on the whole notion of Venus and how it ties into so many stories.
And so I decided to venture into the world for the first time. I have not been reading a lot of fiction, even though, honestly, that's what I write. I write novels, right? But I got sort of, I used to write literary novels around the second, around the time when I published my second novel, I just, I did the deep dive you were doing, which is just completely into Jung and to all of this archetypal world. And I kind of left that behind for a while until I wrote Invocation a couple
of years ago. But anyway, I left that behind. And what happened was that I decided, okay, if I'm going to jump into the feminine, then I'm going to have to read books by women, which are generally, you know, the ones that sell the most. And so I decided I was going to, I couldn't really do romance. I have to be honest, I can't do straight romance because even though I understand, I'm not disparaging it, I understand why it's right.
And it is about relationship, which matters to women and to men as well. But I think more to women just by the look at raw data that shows how many books are sold on this. I realized that the genre that was sweeping all other books aside, and it just actually started happening over the last two years, was something called fantasy romance. And there's a word that they wrote, but let's talk about this. So it's romance, but surrounded by fantasy.
And I thought, okay, I can deal with fantasy. I love Tolkien. I love Hello Pullman, et cetera. And then I found this quote that I thought really speaks to how this journey became very important. It's by a writer named Robert Coover, who I don't know his work, but he did teach at Stanford. And he was asked, which genres do you avoid? And he actually said, what I avoid is a conventional novel, unless it's really quirky. But what he said, and I think this is so interesting because that's exactly
what I found in these places. Thank you. He said, on the other hand, detective novels, westerns, spy stories, horror, and romance, though very conservative forms, are all more like folk and fairy tales and are so much more alluring to a writer trying to burrow inside the collective psyche. That really kind of opened up this whole thing. And so I decided I was going to do it this way because I had no idea. I had no idea about how to read these things, what was important.
I decided I was going to go to Goodreads and just choose the ones with the most reviews, because I knew that that definitely means that's the ones that have been sold the most. And also, they were getting a lot of press. And top of this list is this author named Sarah J. Maas. It had been recommended to me by a couple of young women. I thought, okay, I'm going to look at it.
And she published a series called A Court of Thorns and Roses, and actually had also previously published another series called A Throne of Glass. I did a deep dive in both. Lots of things came out of it. I'm not a big fan of hers as a writer, but I respect the fact that she sold 38 million books. I think we have to look at it and say she is appealing.
Actually, the funniest line I've heard about this is, I had guests over for dinner, and I didn't know the couple very well, but the female in this couple said, yeah, I really enjoyed them. She said, what can I say? My tastes are those of a horny teenager. I said, okay, well, that's one way to look at it. It was hilarious. I'll tell you, I went through this period where I read probably 70 different novelists on this level. But they're very easy to read, right? I'm a very big speed reader.
And those books, you can just get through them very quickly. And I did not finish many of them. So I'd say 30 of them. I just thought this is too stupid even for me. I can't. The world didn't capture me enough. If you're doing fantasy, you have to have a pretty good world building so that I can say, OK, I'm really into your world.
Sarah J. Maas appeals to many people. It's not that I don't think it's her world, at least in The Court of Thorns and Roses, didn't really seem fleshed out enough for me. I didn't really come back to it, but I can understand. But what's interesting about her, okay, and interesting about a lot of these writers, is they're using archetypal motifs. Let me give you an example with her. She uses the cauldron as one of her basic, you know, big, big things.
And in her series, The Court of Thorns and Roses, the cauldron is a powerful and ancient magical artifact. It's where life is created. It has immense power. It can destroy life. It can make people immortal if they go inside. So it's this huge thing. Well, there's a book by Lionel Corbin called The Sacred Cauldron because... In his definition of what the cauldron, now, Lionel Corbett, by the way, has just recently passed away, a very notable Jungian analyst.
He says, look, the cauldron is a sacred container which signifies connection to the spiritual dimension and to our ancestors. In antiquity, it was used ritually to submit a question to the gods asking about the right moment to act. Now, I thought it was interesting when I was reading. She has a lot of other motifs. She goes into the underworld. I mean, you know, the more typical. But the cauldron, I don't know about you, it's not the one that most people
would be familiar with. I think they would be familiar with the grail. They might be familiar with even the stone representing the girl with the cauldron. And so I'm wondering if she used this consciously or unconsciously. Regardless, it is a very important part of the whole series. So that's one thing that made me think about this. Are they using motifs that are they're picking up unconsciously, or are they very much directing this?
I'd say probably there's a bit of both, because that's actually what happens. And I noticed that all of these writers do draw very deeply from the same well that Marie-Louise von France drew from when she was describing the importance of fairy tales. So to me, that's what makes these very readable. Now, at the end of this long journey, I only had one book that I wanted a collection.
Well, there are two. It's a duology that I actually felt I wanted to recommend because I thought the writing was so much more, it was a higher caliber, but I also really, really like her magic system. Rachel Gillig is the writer I'm talking about. And she wrote something called the Shepherd Duology. And it's two books, of course, because it's a duology. One is One Dark Window. That's the first one. And the second one is The Twisted Crown.
And what I liked about Hearst is she based her entire magic system around cards, providence cards, which sound a little bit like tarot cards, but they have different powers. And when I was reading this book, I could almost do a Jungian analysis on this book.
I thought, wow, you could actually do a pretty good one on this duology because of so many things that are either accidentally or consciously or unconsciously put in there, down to there's one very interesting card, and I'll only say this, the maiden card, which there is a whole thing built around it that has so much to say about the feminine, so much. And so, love that one. So, even though this is not my usual recommendation.
I still recommend to those who love fiction who want to enter this world that has taken over the fiction industry and sold so many books, I think that's the duology that I would recommend. So, that's The Shepherd King. I've actually started One Dark Window. I decided a couple of months ago that I needed to stop reading nonfiction at night. Yeah. It stimulated my brain in ways that aren't conducive to good movie. So I started reading One Dark Window, and I'm fascinated.
I love it. I was going to ask you, I don't know, from this duology in particular, or the whole series of books that you read, several questions that come to mind. The first one is... Do you think you've found what you were looking for? If you were looking for anything at all specifically? We've talked about this before, that one of the ways to look at your own interior world is to see what calls out to you.
And so obviously I was trying to work out that, you know, the concept of whatever the feminine means, which of course transcends gender, transcends a whole bunch of things. But I knew that it was something that I was particularly interested in exploring. And one thing that I have to say, I don't know why I didn't think before. Well, why don't you look at fiction? For God's sake, I write fiction. And I know that one of the reasons I write fiction is I'm exploring parts of myself.
One of the things fiction authors always get asked, which is kind of funny when I do book clubs or whatever, is, oh, who are these people based on? And they're not based on anybody in the outer reality. They're all me. You know, whether I'm writing a love story or most of the time I'm not. But if I am writing a love story, it's definitely my parts of myself, my psyche that are coming together to have a conversation. So why wouldn't I look for this in other novels?
It's funny. I used to, you know, my graduate degree is partially in literature, and I love 19th century literature, some of the 20th century grades. Something happened that just stopped me from, and this, so the great thing about this is it brought me back into contact with fiction, you know, and it's allowed me to also go back into other types of fiction. But it really made me consider why we dismiss these types of books.
And I think this is very much part and parcel of the overall dismissal of the feminine values, which include relationship, which include connection. One of the things I did is I went down the Reddit rabbit hole to try to figure out what people are saying about these books. And one of the most interesting things is the arguments between the purists. The fantasy writers who do not focus on relationship, and these fantasy romance writers that do focus but also create worlds.
And I think that there's a level of snobbery about, well, look what you're doing. This is not pure fantasy. And to me, it's like, listen, guys, or listen, and women, by the way, also believe that as well, too. So it's not like it's only the men, but there are different ways to approach the same subject. And frankly, one is much more popular for a reason. But I thought it best described that a lot of the, and by the way, these other types of fantasy are also written by women very aptly.
So Marissa Le Guin is amazing. So it's not just men. It's more that I think a lot of those are based on power and a lot of these are based on love. Okay. Okay. And we get back to the fundamental conflict that we have all the time. There are power dynamics in the fantasy romance ones. Please, you know, let's be assured of that. But at the heart of them is love, whereas at the heart of the other ones is dominance, power, who wins in the end. And they're two conflicting narratives.
And what I think I admire the most about romance fantasy authors, I may not be very enamored of the writing style or whatever, that's irrelevant, that they've managed to combine those two. You can't sell 38 million copies of your books unless there's some men in there also reading it and I see them review it. But I just thought that was an interesting dynamic. So yeah, no, for me, it was a really interesting way to see where I was also being a snob and I was also rejecting a lot of these things.
That's a great way to deal with your own shadow of material. Why? Why? And to put me in contact, perhaps, with parts of myself that are not generally there. Yeah. Do you think this whole endeavor will somehow inform the novel you're working on now? It is definitely informing on the one I'm incubating now, Carly, but I got to tell you, the resistance is still there. I have a habit of wanting to kill somebody off at the end of a novel.
Yeah, it definitely is. In fact, one of the reasons I did actually start this is I wanted to write a fantasy slash history novel where I'm working on right now. Hopefully, we'll get it on the page at some point. So that was one of the reasons. And I think it is informing me, but I think on a larger level, fiction can do this.
You're going to talk about your second book next. I'll give you the second book that you're going to talk about, and that will be Carly Mountain which I also loved and she has a quote in that book and I'll hand it off to you to talk more about this which I love which is she says language is power the stories we live and tell literally shape our world and sense of self the telling of our stories can help us to transform our tragedies into gold and I think
fiction allows us to do that that's why I love the classics they're doing that you're getting into that world and you're allowing for that transformation to happen now you tell me why this book by Carly Mountain yeah the same thing, actually you recommended this book to me and yeah we connected in like mid 2024 like around June I think I reached out to you and I think shortly thereafter you recommended the book first of all I found it fascinating that the author was
name is was Carly Mountain because I remember having like this obsession with mountains. I started bouldering and climbing in a climbing gym. I became obsessed with Patagonia because I think part of it was their logo. So for a while, I was really fascinated with that symbol. So anyway, I just found it so appropriate that her name was Carly Mountain. This book, I think it also found me in a moment in my life where I actually needed it. I was feeling...
I don't know. I think we all have times in our lives when we feel a bit lost in some kind of personal issue. I think at this particular moment, there were probably different issues that were bothering me. But one of them was this whole idea of, okay, I am a translator. I've been a translator for more than 20 years now. I like my job. I think I'm decent at what I do. Yeah. I discovered him and suddenly I started wondering if I was doing the right thing
with my life. if I should consider becoming an analyst. And I've been considering that for years now. And for some reason, last year, I had moments where that tension was really getting to me. And I had read enough and done enough soul-searching to realize there's something I need to look at within, but I'm not sure how to go about that. And sometimes I think that stories can guide you. I honestly feel this is another one of the books last year that I read from the first page to the last.
Without going on a detour. And reading this book, particularly in the mornings with my coffee and my highlighters, it became like this ritual. I was going into the sanctuary and someone was taking me by the hand telling me, first of all, you're not the first person Human being could be at the place where you are right now, which is already helpful, obviously. And I guess, you know, intellectually, you know this, but there's something about stories that just goes to your heart.
I really like her style and how she structured the book. I really loved how she describes, I think I'm both part of here, like the seven gates of the descent. Yes, the Anana descent, yes. So you have to relinquish something in each one of those gates. Just everything she tells and just thinking that this is a story that was originally written, like, what was it? And how long ago? I can't remember the dates, like 1600 BCE or even.
Yes, it's one of my most ancient stories, for sure. The Descent of the Nana. Just thinking, first of all, that it was written by a woman, although I think there's people who try to dispute that.
Yes. that to me was also fascinating because it just goes to show you how far yes how much of a common human experience this is and has always been yes and so yeah it was it kind of like the third book that all mentioned afterwards it became something kind of magical for me to work with and i can totally see how this would be great for workshops and retreats because the story itself is it's kind of like the heroine's journey that no one tells you about because we all kind of
know or have heard of the hero's journey which feels much more adventurous and active and you go out there and you find people and you slay the dragon and all this stuff happened out there this one happens down here and that was the first thing that was kind of like a shock for me because as i mentioned before, I was obsessed with mountains. So something in me was wanting to climb a map. Yes.
What I really needed probably in that moment was to descend into the underworld and go within, which is also actually, now that I think of it, tying this to my first book. Something that as a medial woman, you probably intuitively know. And I'm sure I've done this dissent before many times in my life without that guidance of the story. But yeah, again, it was naming something that felt so familiar to me.
And in this dissent, you also start asking yourself questions like, okay, what parts of myself have I disowned? What parts have I condemned to stay in the underworld? Yeah, it was just a fascinating new approach to soul searching and to really going inwards, which is something that I think I do naturally. But for some reason, And at that moment in my life, I was kind of stuck around something that felt uncomfortable. It's so interesting about her. You know, I think she actually,
you mentioned retreats. I think she actually does run retreats. I think in the UK. I'm not sure I'm going to actually tag her on this because she's on Instagram. I totally agree with you about this book, by the way. And you described it so well on the feminine journey. And she makes very clear, like every other Jungian author, the feminine journey is also a journey men must make as well. It's just a journey that's inverse to the one that we generally talk about,
the heroic journey. But it's a heroic journey as well, but it's just an interiorized journey where you go inside. Now, the other one can be argued the same way, even looking at it metaphorically. This one can be always seen dark, right? She has to go into the underworld to tend to her grieving sister, Reshkigal.
And by the way, I mean, the other book that was written, which is a little bit more technical, is the one by Sylvia Brinton Pereira called Descent to the Goddess, which is exactly the story. What I really liked about Carly Mountain's book is how many other authors, and you must have noticed this, She references, and you probably looked at your bookshelf and said, wait, I have all these books.
Gabber Mate, Clarissa Pincolestes, just off the top of my head, Frances Weller, and of course, the Pereira book. She really does a great job of synthesizing all of this. And I really, look, I really value that because people like you and me have a problem. We read too much, but this act of synthesizing takes a lot of discipline, a lot of organization sometimes. This is why I write section. Digesting the material in a really incredible way.
Like you really. Absolutely. Yeah. I was fascinated by how structured it was. Yeah. And that's, I think that's why I felt accompanied. I think the, the synthesis and how she weaves, because the first book also. Weaves personal women's stories. Right, right. And yeah, I think, because I do think some books can be very academic or more technical. And so it's intellectual. It's interesting. It's fascinating, but it doesn't feel like it's holding your hand while you're going through this.
Absolutely. What a great way to put it. I think that is the difference. I read a lot of technical books. They are good, but they do not have the power. And I think this is where fiction can also come in. And that's why it affects us on an emotional feeling level, right?
When you read a story, you can be reduced to tears. When you read an academic work, it's very useful, but you're rarely going to be reduced to tears or to have your feeling function really activated in a big way through connection. So I totally agree. And she does this in nonfiction. She's able to do that by taking you with, as you say, taking you with her on the journey and on Inanna's journey through the seven gates, through this descent, through the disrobing, through the understanding the.
Vulnerability matters and that this is, you know, so you can look at Brené Brown, who I think does a great job on this subject as well. And she gives really good talks. That's how I like to encounter her. And I think Carly Mountain is the same kind of thing in the written word by using all of these things and, you know, incorporating all of these ideas of healing and, you know, Jungian work, whatever it is she does. She's a great, great guide.
And it's amazing you found, Carly, these two guides in the same year when you were doing your own, because I think there's some synchronicity there which is fabulous which is i think what happens all the time you get to suddenly find yourself with the right guides at the right time yeah i was actually thinking how like just as i was explaining it to you how similar that these books actually are and how they are structured and told because there's
something very poetic about them right there's something very personal about the author's life then there are these other stories of other women And yeah, it's interesting that I found those two books. The same year, the same year that I became part of your group that I found you. Yes, yes, yes. I mean, it can't be a coincidence. No, it never is. Some people are the naysayers will say, oh, it's just a coincidence to me. I found this a lot of my life, especially for book people like us.
Books seem to appear at the right time when you need them. They sort of open your world up in such a way that they're absolutely instrumental to the next step you take. So I don't believe it's a coincidence. It is a great example of a synchronicity where the right thing was there at the right time and it helped you. And that's really ultimately the definition of a synchronicity.
It's not a coincidence because it's a coincidence with meaning, something that has great meaning for you and that does actually seem to open up a little bit of the unconscious to you. So, yeah, love that book. Highly recommend to everybody. Just go grab it, read it, post it from it. I haven't posted from it as much because she's actually one of those writers that requires a lot of words because her thinking is, you know, sophisticated. So you can't just excerpt it so easily.
But I have definitely recommended the book and I love it as well. So my next choice is going to the Jungian world. And I want to recommend one of my favorite authors published by my favorite publishing company here out of Toronto, Inner City Books. They publish a guy called J. Gary Sparks, who has written a whole bunch of books. I've read all of them. They're all great. But the one that I focused on last year is the latest one he's published with them, which is called The Call of Destiny.
And the reason I recommend that book is that he is a great guide, speaking of great guides, through a very difficult subject, which is Jung's later books. Ion, Anson of Job, Mysterium. These are books that a lot of people... Do not want to go through. They're difficult. And so you do need a guide. And he is so good. His background is engineering. He's really good, solid, left brain, but he's able to distill things in such a way that they're just easier to read.
Him and I would say the same publishing company publishes Edward Edinger. And I think he's also a great guide to some of Jung's more difficult works. But The Call of Destiny is so good. And he also includes symbols of transformation in that lineup, because even though it's an earlier work, it really does connect to the other ones. So highly, highly recommend you pick up J. Gary Sparks if you're interested in Jung.
And even if you're not interested in Jung and you want to find out, well, how is he radical? Okay, I'll tell you. His later works are really super radical, but they're really super misunderstood. And I think it's because fundamentally these late works require actually you to have done a little bit of work on the Jungian side.
But if you just want an introduction to say, okay, this is how he was thinking in such a radical way, these are all works post his heart attack in 1944, before, where he seemed to have come out and decided, okay, I'm not going to hide. I'm going to talk about alchemy in Mysterium. I'm going to talk about astrology and Ion. I don't care. These are subjects that clearly were of interest to him, and he brings them out in a way that, anyway, they're my favorite works, but you do need a guide.
I think it's important to have a guide. And so for those who want one, I definitely appreciate it. And your guide is J. Gary Sparks, and the book is The Call of Destiny.
And by the way, I am going to link all these books on the show notes you will find them after so it's no worry so what's your last book on the list of recommendations okay my last book which you also know well because this is one of your favorite people on earth yes it's alchemy an introduction to the symbolism and the psychology by mary louise von franz and this book i mean i just don't even know how to begin to describe what it
did to me and what i can say is that to me it almost feels like a talisman if i could wear this book I don't know. Everywhere, I would. I actually discovered this book when I was waiting in my analyst's office. One afternoon, I usually go into this other little office that she has with books. It was actually there in Spanish, so I saw Alquimia. I picked it up because that's what I do when I pick up the books she has there.
And of course the first thing that grabbed me because i think it's the same yeah it's the same in the edition by inner city books which is the one that i ended up getting there's a i never know how to pronounce this euro boris on the cover euro boris yes which is one of my all-time favorite symbols so it had me there and yeah there's just something fascinating on the one hand about alchemy as a subject. And about how Mary Leibold's friends just talked about anything.
Like how she disparaged anything. You're just like in awe of the whole time. And of course, I had already been, because I've, I've traveled to Zurich often for work, and I've already been to Carl Jung's house twice. So I've been in his famous little library. I've seen these, these old, ancient alchemy books.
And I remember the first time I visited the house, how the tour guide, kind of the guide who shows you the house, she told us the whole story of how Mary Louise von Franz went to Young and she wanted analysis that I guess she probably couldn't afford it or whatever.
And he said, okay, they managed to establish an arrangement where he would give her analysis and she would help by translating the old alchemical text, which, of course, as a translator for me, it was already like, well, that's a cool. So what a great thing to start working with young. But yeah, I'm just in sheer awe of her knowledge and, Her capacity to analyze and understand symbols. How she just explains things. Very straightforward.
There's always a sense of humor. Oh, yes. In the background. I also like how there's questions and answers. Because I think these were a series of lectures. Yeah, there are talks. A lot of her work are actually talks that were then transcribed and published by inner city books. Which usually makes her books really interesting to read. Because there is something more conversational. There is a back and forth. And I love it because she will ask questions a lot of times.
She'll be like, how would you interpret that? Or what do you think about it? Yes, yes, yes. This reminds me, by the way, you've read Liz Green's books, which are also based on a lot of the talks she gave at CPA. So Liz Green is one of the Jungian astrologers, probably the best, who's written some incredible books. But some of the best, like Von Francis, like you just said now, are just these transcripts of the seminars she gave where she's doing the same thing.
She's saying, what do you think? She's very Von Francis-like in that regard. And so, yeah, this book, it just transports me somewhere else. And you can just pick it up, open it up, just for any cage, and just kind of be blown away by what you're reading. I also like the images and the illustrations that they included in this edition. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I'll just pick it up every day and kind of open to a page, read through it.
I think you could probably read this book 30 times, something different. I think that's fun, friends in general. I think that book I might have read like three or four times. And you're right, you pick it up later, and you hook into something that you hadn't noticed before. And those illustrations are so important, because in alchemy, that's a lot of what you're finding.
You're finding these texts filled with these mysterious, you know, the king with all the steps, you know, you think, what is this? And she is so good at telling you what it is. that it's, but also because they are, I think, transcripts of her talks, you really get a sense of how much fun she would have been. She's so direct. She's so to the point. There is no tippy-toeing around anything, no attempts to censor herself. It's really quite interesting.
I love that one as well. And I think also there are a lot of misunderstandings about what alchemy is. I think that's also a great book to explain what it actually is and the way they understood it, which is much more psychological and less based on these crazy theories that often show up in Dan Brown novels later on. This is the real stuff, right?
We want to get into the meat of it. I'd say that anything that Von France wrote, but I particularly like that one, because one thing we love is symbolism. We wouldn't be talking about things from a Jungian perspective if we didn't like it. And I think she is particularly adept at showing us what these things mean and how rich they are, the meanings are, not just one. You have to really dig deep. So my last book, Carly, is something that, again, is not Jungian.
Weird, here I am, because, believe it or not, I have many interests outside of all the Jungian authors. You would believe that's all I read. Actually, that's not all I read. But I do like to apply an archetypal lens. That's what it taught me to a whole bunch of things I read. But this book is actually one of my first loves is history. That's what I was training as an academic. I was on the PhD path and then abandoned it to become a writer.
But I've always continued reading about history. I think it's... You know, half my bookshelf is probably that. There was a writer, a historian, who's actually not an academic historian. Perhaps this is why I love this book so much. And her name is Andrea Wolff. She's German, but she lives in England. And she wrote a book that just probably right at the top of my list.
It's called Magnificent Rebels. And it is about a group of incredible intellectuals in a small duchy called Jena, a town which wasn't even that large, but somehow managed in the late 18th century as Napoleon is just about to make his big entry into Europe by basically trying to conquer everything in sight. There's a group of intellectuals that gather, because they had a university, and she explains it very well. This group of intellectuals includes the Schlegels, Schleiling.
Goethe, although he was one of the senior, he was sort of visiting, but he was definitely part of the group. Novalis, it's ridiculous, the group of people that managed to get together in this one little town in this very short space of time. They produced some of the most important romantic texts, philosophy, majorly. And the reason this is important is a lot of our modern worldview comes from this period. We are a product of the Romantics.
And the other companion piece, which is actually a series you can watch, was Simon Shama called The Romantics and Us, where he goes to the paintings. And if you can find this on any of those, I don't know if it's in Prime or whatever, look for it. It is an absolutely fabulous series because he does use things like paintings and music and to really describe how radical the thinking was and how we basically are thinking along the same lines.
But what she does, which makes it so wonderful, is she read through all the letters. It was during the pandemic. She was grounded in London. So she decided to start reading all of these letters. They were prolific letter writers. She had access to a huge amount of these things. She was seeing what the relationships were like, how complicated they got, how the women, especially one particular Caroline Schlegel.
Well, she has a long name because she married a couple of times, and so she ended up with two philosophers' names, but how incredibly important she was to what was going on there. But we don't know her name so much, do we? Because that's usually what happens. But anyway, just a fabulous recreation of a period in time. She's a wonderful narrative storyteller. She's so good, I went and found every other one of her books. Chasing Venus is one of her books.
A lot of her books are about the history of science. She wrote a great book on Alexander Humboldt, again, a person we should all know about, but somehow has disappeared in the English-speaking world. So highly recommend Magnificent Rebels. If you want to understand the thinking that then informed everywhere from Dostoevsky to Jung to whatever, the depth psychologist, you start there. That is the seminal, I think, books, seminal people.
And again, she does a fantastic job of just recreating the atmosphere of the period. So that's my third. And so those are the, yeah, I think that's a lot to give people that can choose. They may not choose any of them, but this is the reason we chose them. And moving forward, we're going to continue on other books As we both have admitted, we do have 20 on the go, so we will find something that we finished. Carly, that's a nudge. Go finish some of these. I'll have to nudge myself the same way.
And mostly we'll be along these lines about just the books that have somehow captured our imagination. So Carly, thank you so much. In the month of February, I will be teaching a course on the archetypal Venus, which includes Carly Martin's book. That is one of the books I recommended people read, along with Sylvia Brinton-Pereira's book, Descent to the Goddess.
And so that's with the Junger Academy. I will link it. I have had such a good time just delving into this world, which includes the Ananda Descent, fantasy romance writers, the grail, so many things, because the story is vast and it is so interesting. So that is what's on tap for me. And let's talk in a couple of weeks, Carly. All right, let's do that. And yes, I will try to finish some of those 25 books, probably start another 20.
Yes, that's a given, that's a given, it's okay. You can even go back and dip into other books that you didn't necessarily read last year, but were actually important to you because I think we have enough on the go that we could be recording for the next 30 years and we still wouldn't get through them. So we're fine there, don't worry about finishing. Just look at your bookshelf and start pulling them out and we'll talk. I will. Okay. All right. Till next time. All right. Bye, Bia.
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