Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
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Guests do not pay to appear. #science
I personally subscribe to The Economist. TOE listeners get 35% off the annual subscription. No other podcast has this! economist.com/TOE
FOLLOW:
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Guests do not pay to appear. #science







![The Unsettling Link Between Jung’s Red Book and Tolkien
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- I personally subscribe to The Economist. TOE listeners get 35% off the annual subscription. No other podcast has this! https://economist.com/TOE
This podcast explores the uncanny link between two of the twentieth centurys great visionary works. Becca Tarnas, assistant professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, joins to discuss her doctoral research into the parallels between Carl Jungs Red Book and J.R.R. Tolkiens lesser-known visionary writings. The central claim: working independently, both men produced strikingly similar imagery, timing, and figures — Jungs Philemon and Tolkiens Gandalf, the Eye of the Evil One and the Eye of Sauron — while each insisted their material felt discovered rather than invented. From there the conversation moves through active imagination, the reality of archetypes, psyche versus mind, and the line between mystical insight and psychosis — a wide-ranging look at where imagination ends and reality begins.
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TIMESTAMPS:
- 00:00:00 - Jung and Tolkiens Red Books
- 00:05:42 - Archetypal Rhymes and Parallels
- 00:11:26 - Defining the Imaginal Realm
- 00:16:38 - Active Imagination vs. Dreaming
- 00:22:00 - Active Imagination Protocol
- 00:27:00 - Psyche’s Spontaneous Expression
- 00:33:57 - Ontology of Imaginal Figures
- 00:39:03 - Psychologizing vs. Mythologizing
- 00:45:57 - Planetary Archetypes Experience
- 00:51:34 - Perceiving Universal Beauty
- 00:58:23 - Universal vs. Objective Reality
- 01:04:00 - Psychosis vs. Gnosis
- 01:09:00 - Grounding the Visionary
- 01:15:00 - Symbolic Language of Madness
- 01:21:00 - Unearned Wisdom and Psychedelics
- 01:26:30 - Motherhood as Expanded State
- 01:33:57 - Meaning in Disconnection
- 01:40:56 - Intuition in Science
- 01:46:55 - Leonardo’s Light and Shade
LINKS MENTIONED:
- Journey To The Imaginal Realm [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/1947544217?tag=toe08-20
- Participatory Imagination [Lecture]: https://beccatarnas.com/2020/08/28/jungs-participatory-imagination/
- Beccas PhD Defense: https://youtu.be/3soOYajHUBM
- The Red Book [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/0393089088?tag=toe08-20
- The Holy Grail Of The Unconscious [Article]: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html
- Active Imagination: https://jungiancenter.org/jung-on-active-imagination-features-methods-and-warnings/
- Jung On Active Imagination [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/0691015767?tag=toe08-20
- Richard Tarnass Website: https://cosmosandpsyche.com/
- The Passion Of The Western Mind [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/0345368096?tag=toe08-20
- Psychological Types [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/1614279705?tag=toe08-20
- The Fellowship Of The Ring [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/0547928211?tag=toe08-20
- Kants Categories: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/
- The Imaginary And The Imaginal [Paper]: http://www.bahaistudies.net/asma/mundus_imaginalis.pdf
- Toni Wolff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Wolff
- The Call Of Cthulhu [Book]: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cc.aspx
- The Shadow: https://iaap.org/jung-analytical-psychology/short-articles-on-analytical-psychology/the-shadow/
- BBC Interviews Curt: https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/m002s4hd
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Guests do not pay to appear. #science The Unsettling Link Between Jung’s Red Book and Tolkien](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/E49g3zJerss/mqdefault.jpg)


