Turn of an Age: The Spiritual Roots of Jungian Psychology in Hermeticism, Gnosticism and Alchemy

Dr. Alfred Ribi, medical doctor, Jungian analyst, teacher, and highly distinguished scholar, has written an absolute tour de force in his “Turn of an Age: The Spiritual Roots of Jungian Psychology In Hermeticism, Gnosticism and Alchemy” recently published in English by Gnosis Archive Books. This book is the product of a deep sense of the roots of Jung’s depth psychology and how those roots continue to play a role in people's lives. These roots, according to Ribi, extend back two millennia to the centuries before and after the life of Christ which saw the emergence of Hermetic philosophy, Gnosticism, and Greek alchemy, an emergence that attempted to alleviate the profound suffering of collective consciousness by supporting the move toward the development of what Ribi refers to as the autonomous individual. These three traditions exemplify the pull toward the irrational and mystery, a pull which anticipated the much later development of depth psychology in the early 1900s with its recognition of the critical importance of the unconscious in the unfolding and development of the individual. As the reader will learn, the deep psychological questions with which we grapple in modern times were paralleled by those grappled with by the ancients. It is as if these questions demanded continued engagement with them over the centuries, an engagement that required not only the depth in a given tradition, but also the full breadth of the combined traditions of Hermeticism, Gnosticism, and alchemy, among others. In it, he unpacks centuries of thought by these different traditions in a way which keeps the reader, even one without exposure to these traditions, deeply involved and he accomplishes this through the well-placed use of analogies based on modern medicine, Jung’s depth psychology, and real analytical encounters in Dr. Ribi’s psychotherapeutic practice. The book begins with the psychological suffering experienced in the centuries before the birth of Christ and the profoundly difficult movement toward the development of the autonomous individual in the context of mass society. This movement was grounded in Hellenism, a spiritual movement which eventually came to include all the traditions described earlier. This spiritual movement began to inquire into that which was seen to imprison human beings. In this, Ribi describes the liberation from the Classical Culture’s embrace of Nature, matter, and fate. Such liberation required that these be seen under the intense light of consciousness. Instead of being dominated by matter, there was a movement toward abstraction and a striving toward its essence - in other words, striving for liberation from surface forms by favoring the eternal. Liberation from fate was seen to be accomplished by the growth and transformation that could result through the first-hand, utterly convincing experience of God. From this point, Ribi moves toward the essential component of liberation as these traditions came to understand it - that of the redeemer, where the various understandings of the role the redeemer plays in the different traditions are explored and the relationship of the redeemer with the Creator is discussed. The culmination of the book is a real gift - it treats the reader to an up-close view of one of the traditions discussed in the book, Gnosticism, and an in-depth look at how the foundational positions taken by this tradition are revealed through their interpretation of and commentary on a text with which we are already well familiar - the New Testament Gospel of John. Let me end this review by sharing an image that emerged as I began this wonderful book by Dr. Ribi, an image which symbolizes this book to me. It is an image of the thread of Ariadne connecting past to present, Hermeticism, Gnosticism, and Alchemy (and others) serving as its different strands, circling one another, mutually reinforcing, each essential to the whole, together adding to the strength of the thread in its connection of Jung’s depth psychology to its profoundly rich and fertile past.

Friendly warning: this is NOT a book for casual readers. This extraordinary publication is difficult to take in and metabolize because it is written at such a deep and complex level, drawing (as the title states) from Hermeticism, Gnosticism, and Alchemy—three mystery traditions that are not well known, much less discussed very often from any academic, educated angles. ¶¶ One of Jung’s most difficult books to read was “Mysterium Coniunctionis,” and it might be claimed that Ribi has written its sequel. The difference is that Ribi has access to the amazing Nag Hammadi materials, which Jung did not. ¶¶ With great finesse, Ribi marshals these materials to make his arguments in a dazzling display of knowledge that results in something that alternates between a “slog” and a “startling paradigm-shift.” Few will have attained to the sophistication about these topics that Ribi has, and while he attempts to balance each foot in two worlds—contemporary Jungian conception AND antique praxis—one can easily drown in the material simply due to its lack of familiarity. ¶¶ As the reader will discover, and to Ribi’s everlasting credit, this material is not “dumbed-down” by any means, which can make it challenging, and at the same time show us the stretch goal we can aim to close in order to nip at Ribi’s heels. We need more understanding of these concepts, especially in their juxtaposition against Christianity, which is so overworked, and rarely opposed. Such rich material is entirely worthy of Jung, and I daresay that, were he alive today, he would have heartily approved of Ribi’s efforts in this remarkable text.