01-03-2010, 06:29 PM
I've been searching the internet for a digital copy of Edward F Edinger's The Aion Lectures. It is not digitally available. I then set out to at least find a copy of Edinger's Preface to this book. That also is not digitally available. Finally, I decided to type a section of the preface and post it myself. It is just three pages of text. Part way through my keyboard exploits, my laptop ran out of power and a warning light came on. I attached my power lead, but that failed quite unexpectedly. What I had typed was completely lost.
Make of it this what you will. I know what I have concluded. If readers wish to read Edinger's book they will have to buy it for themselves. Perhaps it is a necessary personal step that they do so? I think it probably is.
One of the points Edinger made in his preface - of which there are several vital ones, is that he likens Jung's late writings - post Jung's 1944 illness and his "second birth so to speak", to a rich fruit cake. By this he means that one need read Jung the way one eats a fruit cake - very slowly. The "reading is exceedingly rich, exceedingly delicious" and "Aion can only be assimilated in very small bites", because it is the richness of the psyche itself that is being presented.
![[Image: 7330_282499000600_803460600_8939432_2706813_n.jpg]](http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs226.snc1/7330_282499000600_803460600_8939432_2706813_n.jpg)
The Mithraic god Aion.
Make of it this what you will. I know what I have concluded. If readers wish to read Edinger's book they will have to buy it for themselves. Perhaps it is a necessary personal step that they do so? I think it probably is.
One of the points Edinger made in his preface - of which there are several vital ones, is that he likens Jung's late writings - post Jung's 1944 illness and his "second birth so to speak", to a rich fruit cake. By this he means that one need read Jung the way one eats a fruit cake - very slowly. The "reading is exceedingly rich, exceedingly delicious" and "Aion can only be assimilated in very small bites", because it is the richness of the psyche itself that is being presented.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14