Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

(Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2020), ISBN: 978-0-7643-6060-2 Eight years ago, in 2012 (a year that the Mayan calendar made many of us pay close attention to, as we did again with 2020), I read a book that I predicted would become a treasured friend that I would return to time and time again. That book was Healing the Sacred Divide (subtitled “Making Peace with Ourselves, Each Other, and the World”), also by this author. That prediction proved to be true. I am going to make the same prediction for this one. With the same alchemical mix of stunning visuals by a variety of artists, inspirational quotes, a deep exploration of myths, inspirational biographies, and complex concepts made understandable through the deft use of language and a teacher’s touch for explanation, Raffa has given motivated readers an opportunity to work with four pairs of Archetypes at work in our souls, split into Lunar and Solar energies: Mother and Father, Queen and Warrior, Mediatrix and Sage, and Belov...

 (Los Angeles: Tiberius Press, 2017). ISBN: 978-0-9981128-0-0 (paperback) In the interest of Disclosure, I served as the editor for this book. That said, and keeping in mind the relationship of editors like Maxwell Perkins with their writers (in his case, no less than Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and, somewhat synchronistically—to use Jung’s term—Thomas Wolfe), this should not preclude a fair review. Indeed, editors are reviewing books all the time. The difference is, they have the opportunity to provide different eyes to the author’s work before the fact, as opposed to reviewers, who do so after the fact (although I have done a number of pre-publication reviews that precipitated changes before publication). But enough of that. I agreed to the editing contract for the same reason that I am now reviewing Toni Wolff & C. G. Jung— Nan Savage Healy’s detailed and insightful exploration of Jung’s unsung and nearly obliterated collaborator shines a powerful light on Jung, whom I, ...

It’s always easy to like a book with which you instantly agree. We embrace the familiar, the similar, the types of things made of the same prima materia with which we’ve built our beliefs. But so much the better when an idea, a thesis, a text that we at first reject wins us over through a mix of solid research, real-life examples, and strong writing. Such is the case with my experience of Guilt with a Twist. In the Overview, Dr. Staples states: “We have to sin and incur guilt, if we are to grow and reach our full potential” (xv). Being a “lapsed” Catholic who had often experienced guilt as a weapon and thought the concept of “Original Sin” or having to confess your sins to an intermediary was nothing but power-clenching propaganda on the part of the Church, I found myself inching toward dismissing the book entirely, a feeling that persisted as I continued through the first section. The idea here is that there is “Good Guilt,” as demonstrated by such historical luminaries as Socrates, R...

Written by Erel Shalit, a noted and extensively published Jungian psychoanalyst practicing in Ra’anana, Israel, Enemy, Cripple & Beggar is a treasure for our times. Vital and applicable to both lay people and experts, the book flows seamlessly and spirally from scholarship, to textual interpretation, to case studies, and the analysis of dreams. Shalit draws on an impressive breadth of scholarship and myths/fairy tales, looking at both history (e.g., the Crusades or Masada) and story. The book first discusses the key aspects of the Hero, considering Byron, the work of Robert Graves and Robert Bosnak, the Bible, and Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, among many other sources. I take as my starting point the condition of mythlessness in the modern world, as expressed by Jung and reinforced by Campbell and how it is limiting our vision and ability to cure an ailing world rife with war and economic/environmental woes. If ever we needed to consider the role of the Hero, it...