Encounters with C. G. Jung: The Journal of Sabi Tauber (1951–1961)
Introduction
About this Edition
“I am handing you my journal,” Sabi Tauber is reported to have said to her son Christian in the spring of 1984.
“Do with it whatever you please. You can burn it or, if you think it could be valuable for others, you can publish it after my death.”
Obviously she had no objection to publication; on the contrary, she simply did not want to burden anyone with it.
Burning was certainly never an option.
Sabi also left a copy of her journal to her daughter-in-law, Marianne Tauber, who resides in the USA; she might translate it into English and then, if she should wish, have it published someday.
As trustingly as Sabi handed over her journal to her son, Christian Tauber handed it to us in 2016, asking whether we could imagine doing the editing.
He saw it as a continuation of the transcription work we had done on Winterthur Colloquies published in 1999.
A brief, initial glance at the densely typewritten pages was enough to realize that the document held real pearls – many eternally authentic teachings of C. G. Jung.
These teachings had not only been helpful to the journal’s author.
They would also be an inspiration to a wider public, who, with the help of Jung’s knowledge of the unconscious, is tracing the great questions of humanity.
What Jung has to say, for example, about the meaning of the shadow for the continuity of our culture, should not concern us less today than it did then.
The document is extremely valuable, not least because fewer and fewer people remain that can still give such an authentic account of Jung as a human being, as a man.
The pathway from the raw typescript to this book, however, would turn out to be long and challenging.
It seemed sensible to us to coordinate the German and English editions, since at that point, the English translation by Marianne Tauber was already well on the way.
As soon as the idea of a bilingual edition was welcomed by the entire Tauber family as well as by the Foundation of the Works of C. G. Jung, the project could really take off.
Sabi Tauber’s journal integrates the recordings of the aforementioned discussion evenings, where C. G. Jung answered questions within a relatively small circle of the Tauber family’s friends. Parts of these recordings were already published in 1999 under the title, C. G. Jung, Ober Gefuhle und den Schatten.
Winterthurer Fragestunden (On Feelings and the Shadow. Winterthur Colloquies).
At that time, the text was accompanied by three CDs with the original audio recording.
However, the publication had been out of print for some time.
In November 1998, in the foreword of the textbook of the abovementioned publication, Christian Tauber wrote: “In October 1955, C. G. Jung visited Sabi and Ignaz WauberScheitlin in Winterthur for the first time.
Within the family circle, each of us five children was allowed to ask Jung a personal question.
When he returned, on May 26, 1956, the circle of attendees had been extended by three couples, with whom they were friends.
During his third visit, on May 29, 1957, ten more acquaintances and relatives joined, and someone recorded Jung’s answers on tape; unfortunately, the recordings were
incomplete.
It was not until his fourth visit, on June 27, 1957, that I was in possession of my own tape recorder, and, with Jung’s explicit consent, I was able to record all the questions
and answers.
On March 3, 1961, Jung’s state of health no longer allowed him to travel to Winterthur, so the last question and answer session took place at his home in Kusnacht – without a tape recorder.
An initial question would be presented to Jung in the car, as the hosts were picking him up in Kusnacht or Bollingen.
All other questions developed in the moment during the course of the evening. [ … ]”
The Winterthur Colloquies are being republished here; and for the first time they now appear in English.
A revision wasn’t considered necessary, even if, after today’s editorial review, perhaps minor Introduction
linguistic corrections would be made and a few more comments added in footnotes.
The division into chapters and titles (On Feelings, On Redemption, On New Symbols, On Projections, On the Shadow, On Psychological Insights) were added at the time by Walter-Verlag.
They remain unchanged to help the reader recognize the identity of the recordings.
They reappear here in their original chronology.
The question of what form Jung’s statements should take was a bit of a challenge for the present volume.
At times, Sabi Tauber wrote her notes during a discussion with Jung.
Probably more often, however, she made them immediately afterward, so they can’t be
regarded as actual quotations.
The same applies to Ignaz Tauber’s notes, also found in this volume.
He made them as a follow-up to a particularly meaningful meeting with Jung. Consequently, where no audio recordings exist, quotes in quotation marks seemed inappropriate and illegitimate.
In the English translation, Sabi’s quotation marks were kept in place, which can be justified as far as every translation of a text into another language is a subjective judgement call.
Importantly, what Jung said to Sabi shall not be understood as literal quotations.
This does not mean that we found any reason whatsoever to doubt the accuracy of the recorded content of Jung’s statements.
We decided to distinguish Jung’s words from Sabi’s questions, either by offsetting them visually or by marking them as “commentary.”
Sometimes we used indirect speech, and other times we appealed to the reader’s feeling to apprehend who is speaking.
Because Sabi – an abbreviation of Elisabeth – carried her affectionate pet name throughout her life, we would like to refer to her that way as well.
Preserving the atmosphere of Sabi Tauber’s journal entries was particularly important to us.
They naturally reflect her own personal way of experiencing, which we would like to honor with the utmost respect.
This also includes the fact that we have only made compelling linguistic improvements.
Of course, the dialogues in Swiss dialect were noted by Sabi in High German; nevertheless, the colloquial language cannot be ignored. In order to preserve the character of journal entries, we have only very cautiously adapted them to High
German.
We find it, especially in the case of Jung, quite refreshing to hear his own way of speaking.
At times, considering today’s understanding, Jung’s wording is not politically correct.
However, we need to keep in mind that he lived in a time when people spoke in a certain way, and that it was one of his outstanding qualities to call things directly by their name.
Terms like “negro,” “primitive,” or “archaic” are examples of what was considered acceptable use of language at the time.
When we look contextually it becomes obvious that far be it from Jung to make derogatory or racist remarks. J
Jung’s writings, letters, seminars, and even this publication give ample demonstration of his high esteem for those we now respectfully refer to as indigenous peoples.
So, for the sake of historical accuracy, we abstained from adjusting his wording.
We have added numerous comments in footnotes, many of which establish the connection of C. G. Jung’s spontaneous utterances to his collected works.
Some simply provide the reader with useful additional information.
The footnotes of the two editions are naturally not completely identical, but rather have been aligned to the extent that the German- and English-speaking reader now hold essentially the same book in their hands.
We have placed particular emphasis on treating the private matters of all persons addressed as sensitively as possible.
Biographical Notes
Sabi lived from 1913 to 2001.
She was born Elisabeth Scheitlin, in Winterthur, on August 27, 1913. She had two sisters, seven and thirteen years older.
She spent most of her life in the small, proud industrial city of Winterthur.
Her mother, Emma Scheitlin-Steinbruchel, was a devoted housewife and an excellent cook.
She loved the arts and cultivated her talents in embroidery and sewing.
She enabled her daughter Sabi to take lessons in music theater and rhythmics with the then-famous Mimi Scheiblauer in Zurich, who was one of the pioneers in introducing rhythmics as a learning tool in remedial education.
Later on, Sabi placed great emphasis on musicality and body movement in the education of her own children.
All of her five children learned to play an instrument, and daily practice was just as much part of everyday life as brushing their teeth.
Sabi loved playing the piano.
When she played Bach’s Italian Concerto, for example, and her children danced to it, she was thoroughly delighted.
Music gave her a lightness that helped her endure hardship.
Sabi’s father, Emil Scheitlin, held a significant position as a mechanical engineer at Sulzer AG in Winterthur.
In 1936, he received an honorary doctorate from the ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) for his significant inventions.
He was the inventor of the so-called Sulzer steam turbine.
When Sabi was one year old, he took on an attractive job in Petrograd (St. Petersburg).
The family moved with him to Russia, where they experienced challenging years from
1913 to 1917.
When the outbreak of the revolution forced them to return to Switzerland, the mother and the three girls traveled ahead.
On the way home from Petrograd, via Finland and Sweden, Sabi fell ill with scarlet fever and had to spend several months in the hospital in Stockholm.
As a result, she suffered from a heart valve disease that wasn’t recognized until she was about forty years old.
The original title of Sabi’s journal was “Wind in My Face.”
The title referred to an unforgettable childhood experience that connected her to her father: On several occasions she had the opportunity to experience with him the inauguration of a new steamboat on one of the Swiss lakes.
She used to love to sit on the ship bow and watch how the water parted.
She loved to feel the wind blowing in her face.
Much later in life she remembered feeling the same fresh breeze in her face whenever she met C. G. Jung.
Sabi was thirty-two years old when she first met Jung in Rapperswil, in 1945, at a lecture for the Medical Society of the Canton of Zurich.
It was in the coat room. Jung’s hat had fallen to the ground.
When she leaned forward to pick it up, Jung did the same, so their heads bumped together.
Jung said, laughing: “Wow, you have a hard head!” Sabi replied: “And so do you!” Maybe it was during the lecture that Sabi felt the desire to talk to Jung in person?
Sabi was burdened by family tensions from the time her father got involved in an extramarital relationship.
The much younger woman lived with the family: the marital couple and their three daughters.
In the beginning, at least, her father’s mistress was appreciated by everyone, but later was ostracized as “the temptress.”
After Sabi’s mother passed away, the mistress became the wife of the 80-yearold.
At the time, Sabi was without doubt friendly towards her father’s second wife, and she may have always possessed a conciliatory eros.
Yet, her eros was seriously put to the test once more in her own marriage.
At a young age she swore to herself to never start a family, to never get married and have children.
Fortunately, fate had other plans.
Right at the beginning of her medical studies she met Ignaz, who radiated vitality.
Ignaz dreamt of having at least twelve children, and soon his life-spark also ignited Sabi.
Ignaz was born in Alexandria, Egypt, on December 28, 1907.
He was the son of Bernhard and Amelia Tauber-Luzzatto.
He had a twin sister and five other siblings.
His paternal ancestors were Jews and came from Czernowitz, today’s Chernivtsi, in Western Ukraine.
His father Bernhard completed a successful military career before turning to a career in diplomacy.
As consulate councilor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he was sent off to Alexandria, a vivid and cosmopolitan city at the time.
Ignaz would have lasting memories of the Arab nannies that punished him and his siblings with horrific stories of demons.
And even though he suffered from nightmares, his soul felt a deep, lifelong connection to the Egypt of his childhood days as well as the country’s ancient mythology.
His wish or urge to write a research paper on Egyptian mythology is mentioned several times in Sabi’s journal. – During World War I the family had to leave Alexandria.
After yearlong stays in Rome and Cologne, the Taubers were finally able to settle in Switzerland.
The once wealthy family had suffered great losses.
Ignaz had to complete an apprenticeship as a commercial clerk.
Later he took evening classes to attain the qualification for university entrance (matura), before he could finally begin studies in medicine.
Sabi for her part wanted to become a medical doctor in order to help poor families in India.
When registering at the University of Zurich, she met Ignaz – though it wasn’t their first encounter: the Tauber and Scheitlin families had previously met in 1923 during their
vacations in the mountains.
After their engagement, she gave up her own career aspirations.
They married in 1935, and throughout Ignaz’ time as an assistant doctor she went along with him to various destinations.
Their children were born between 1937 and 1950: Roswith in 1937,
Jurg in 1938, Christian in 1942, Lotti in 1944, and Marianne in 1950.
Sabi took the initiative to find a home for the expanding family.
She succeeded, and in 1942 they were able to move into their house on Salstrasse in Winterthur.
It offered enough space for the large family, and for Ignaz’s medical practice on the ground floor.
A little anecdote from that time, the early 1940s: A bookseller friend of theirs from Winterthur sent a new book release to Dr. Tauber for review: The Psychology of C. G. Jung, by Jolande Jacobi.
Sabi returned it immediately: no interest.
The book was sent to them twice more, the third time it sat around the house until it was too late to send it back.
Ignaz became strangely fascinated by the book and began reading it, until Sabi took notice and threw it in the trash.
Ignaz bought another copy and secretly continued reading it at night.
One day, Sabi’s curiosity was finally aroused, and she began to read it as well.
They were both hooked.
Ignaz began an analysis with Jolande Jacobi, and Sabi with C. A. Meier.
After that, the Taubers bought C. G. Jung’s books and together discussed what they had read – for Sabi it had been something like a “daily service.”
When a painful episode broke out in the marriage relationship, necessitating a deeper examination of the unconscious, Sabi wrote to Jung asking if he would take her and her husband into analysis.
Jung had to decline, saying he could no longer take new analysands, but sent Sabi to Barbara Hannah and Ignaz to Marie-Louise van Franz.
For both of them, this was the best thing that could have happened.
In the early 1950s, Sabi and Ignaz started attending the Psychology Club in Zurich, founded by C. G. Jung in 1916.
Jung was often present and gave frequent lectures.
In 1952, with a warm recommendation by Jung himself, the couple became regular members.
From 1977 to 1984 Ignaz Tauber was president of the Psychology Club Zurich.
Here we close our biographical notes on Sabi and her husband Ignaz.
Out of the many recollections of their descendants, we have noted mainly those events that contribute to the understanding of the journal records.
There are still many anecdotes yet to be told, many historical details to be revealed, joys and tragedies to be recalled from this life rich with memorable events.
Let us call to mind that the very biography of an individual is essentially created by the self.
Thunderclouds Over the Marriage
With the help of metaphors such as “stormy clouds” and “a dark cloud from which thunder rolled and lightning flashed,” Sabi confides in her journal that her marriage suffers deep turmoil.
She experiences that archetypal forces can interfere in human relationships as powerful natural phenomena.
Ignaz had apparently fallen in love with another woman; Sabi suffers for many long years from this tense and humiliating situation.
Many years later, Sabi retitled the typescript of her journal, “Deja-vu,” assumedly because she realized that she needed to endure and suffer in her marriage what she had likewise experienced as a child, albeit from a different perspective.
This time, however, she could share her dreams with Jung.
And Jung recognized that basically, the love entanglements of her husband, which were painful for her, had the potential to set her on her individual path .
What happens to an individual human being cannot be rationalized away if it is orchestrated by the self and not by collective moral concepts: at least not without causing psychological damage.
Anima and animus are not mere theoretical terms, but names of the divine figures operating in the background of such drama.
In Jung’s understanding, the anima of a man or the animus of a woman are determining factors that seek to lead individuals to unknown goals in their creative lives.
However, if inadequately comprehended in consciousness, these factors potentially create a disturbance that can develop into an irritating and torturous presence, especially in a marriage.
They begin to act autonomously and cause any number of disruptions.
In the case of Ignaz and the way he experienced his anima, Jung’s explanations are real eye-openers.
Jung advised him to focus, by putting down on paper the essence of his work on Egypt, so as not to get lost in intuitions.
This would help a great deal in liberating him from his anima problem.
Jung recognizes that Ignaz is in the grip of the archetype.
However, he does not simply defend him on that account; he also expresses outrage over his tactlessness and cruel lack of feeling towards his wife.
He sees Ignaz’ inflation as the cause of this insensitivity.
He explains to Sabi the significance of anima projections and the effect they have, not least, on sexual life.
Jung also does not mince words in regard to Sabi’s pronounced animus problem.
She suffers, understandably, from her husband’s anima entanglements; nonetheless she herself is called upon to pursue a creative activity.
Not only he, but she, too, has to take on a creative task, even though she is already occupied with caring for five children.
For this reason, he supports her participation in a group he has put together for further research on synchronicity. (See below.)
Sabi possibly sensed something of this mystery early on, but had yet to understand, by way of her own suffering, that the conflict is rooted in the self.
Sabi is noting here core ideas of Jungian psychology.
Only if we recognize this great arc of psychic reality, that is, if we are aware of the presence of divine figures in marriage, can we understand why Sabi, sometime later in her life, almost feels a kind of gratitude that Ignaz did not spare her such difficulties.
The love problem formed the prima materia for her individuation process, to put it in alchemical words.
Transference to Jung Sabi is soon destined to experience for herself what it means to be seized by archetypal forces.
Quite obviously, she has a so-called “transference” to Jung.
Or, as we like to say: The god Eros has hit her and made his incomprehensible demands on her.
Jung encouraged her not to evade, but to allow herself to be overwhelmed by that which is greater than herself.
For, so says Jung, without being gripped, a person could have no deep experience coming from such an encounter; there would be no effect and ultimately no value.
Sabi registers Jung’s comments and interpretations of her dreams, she writes poems full of longing and makes warm-hearted paintings of her encounters with him.
Hardly by chance, Sabi records the words of C. G. Jung on the cover of her journal, from his biography Memories, Dreams, Reflections (chapter “Late Thoughts II”):
“There is no better means of intensifying the treasured feeling of individuality than by the possession of a secret which the individual is pledged to guard.”
The mystery of her life – or should we say the myth of her life? – is her soul’s encounter with C. G. Jung.
Occasionally, in the journal, she calls him the “old wise man” or “guru.”
While this may sound somewhat effusive to today’s ears, it was undoubtedly a truth for her.
Sabi indeed experienced in Jung the psychopompos, the guide of her soul.
He was a guru for her, that is, the personification of an archetypal figure with superhuman charisma and irresistible appeal.
Jung, for his part, explicitly refused to accept the role of guru, as we read in Sabi’s journal.
But he was clear about the function and effect of this significant projection: The conscious experience and such enduring deep emotion can bestow meaning upon one’s entire life.
Due to his enormous experience, Jung was able to keep the door open to Sabi during those tumultuous years, while, at the same time, remain on guard so as not to identify himself with the Old Wise Man.
He was acquainted all too well with the dangerous side of any identification with the archetypal reality.
When at one point Jung explained to Sabi that, in that specific moment, he was a god to her – which may cause some readers to be appalled, or to shake their heads in dismay
- Jung alludes exactly to this numinous quality of a love projection.
Throughout his life, Jung tried to find words for this mystery, although he knew that, ultimately, there are no words.
Over his lifetime he dared to interpret, although he knew perhaps better than anyone
else that there are only hints, only verbalizing aided by analogies.
In his book, The Psychology of Transference, not published until 1946, C. G. Jung admits that the transference phenomenon is so complicated and various that he lacked the categories for a systematic account.
He therefore preferred to draw upon the symbolism of the alchemical opus.
Here, he had found an adequate language for the otherwise inexpressible.
He concluded that the innermost essence of transference is the uniqueness of a life individually lived.
Transference belongs to that kind of processes, which nobody can grasp from outside, but which, on the contrary, holds the individual concerned in its grip.
With a lot of personal courage and self-honesty, Sabi Tauber took upon herself all that was visited upon her – but that she had not sought – by fate.
Accompanied carefully by Jung, it was possible for her to experience the transference to him, and thereby sense the meaning-giving dimension encountered in this relationship.
The following words are from Sabi’s last journal entries: “He has shown all of us the possibility of creating culture out of transference.
Not a complete sacrifice is required, but a transformation! [ … ] Not to the beyond belongs our purest love, but into our living hearts on this Earth.”
- G. Jung’s Interest in Oracle Methods
One of the longer passages yet to be mentioned in Sabi’s journal, for which a few explanations may make many a reader grateful, addresses Jung’s occupation with various oracle or divination methods.
Jung and Sabi discuss several geoscopes as well as tarot card spreads, and often they would add a hexagram of the / Ching.
We reproduced the sketches photographically to preserve the original character of
the material they studied together.
Anyone who makes the effort to understand Jung’s resulting comments in detail will be amazed at the astonishing connections he makes and will certainly find them rewarding.
However, it is not so easy to find one’s way through these passages, and often the reader might wish to learn more from Jung than can be found in the shorthand
of Sabi’s notes.
The question arises: Why and in what way did C. G. Jung pay so much attention to divination (to geomancy and the tarot, in addition to astrology and the Chinese oracle of the I Ching)? Our anticipated answer: Apparently, he was interested in “synchronicity.” But why?
And what does that entail?
Jung refers to synchronicity as a meaningful coincidence or correspondence of two events, which are not causally connected.
Or, in other words, as a coincidence of subjective and objective facts which cannot be explained causally, but which convey the feeling that a latent meaning exists.
Sabi Tauber quotes Jung in her journal: Synchronicity “doesn’t work causally, but meaningfully, and only when deep emotion is involved!”
The terms “meaning” and “meaningful” are important here.
In his most relevant essay on this topic, “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle,” C. G. Jung specifies that “meaning” is the essential criterion of the synchronicity phenomena; but what comprises the meaningful factor is beyond our recognition.
Nevertheless, Jung wanted to find suitable methods by which the reality of the collective unconscious could be objectively determined. He postulated the existence
of an organizing archetype, the archetype of the self, to which he also ascribed the property of unified psyche and matter.
Jung was engaged in the question of the psychological conditions that he suspected behind synchronistic events.
When he came across the Chinese / Ching, he encountered, for the first time, an
entire religious philosophical system that did not characterize linear relationships by cause-and-effect, as is so prevalent in the West, but rather described synchronistic phenomena.
His acquaintance with Richard Wilhelm, translator of the I Ching: Book of Changes,
must have been one of the most significant in Jung’s life.
Thanks to Wilhelm, Jung gained access to synchronistic thought, which he understood as complementary to the causal thinking of the West.
The classical Chinese way of thinking does not consider the question of why something happens, or which factor causes what effect, but rather, “what likes to happen together in a meaningful way in the same moment,” to use Marie-Louise von Franz’s terminology in On Divination and Synchronicity: The Psychology of Meaningful Chance.
These were the connections that fascinated Jung.
He wanted to know if the same kinds of connections were also observable in
geomancy, the tarot, and, last but not least, in horoscopes.
- G. Jung had an immense interest in astrology, which is extensively documented in Liz Green’s book Jung’s Studies in Astrology. Prophecy, Magic, and the Qualities of Time, published in 2018.
Early in life he had already calculated his birth charts.
In his Red Book he repeatedly illustrates the signs of the zodiac.
Throughout his entire body of work, he constantly refers to his psychology in relation to the Platonic age, notably in the Visions Seminar, held from 1930 to 1934 (published in
1998), and in Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, one of his major works.
Even though Jung had rounded off his book on synchronicity by including a preface in 1950, in no way had he considered his research on the subject to be complete.
Synchronicity phenomena continued to preoccupy him, perhaps more than ever.
This becomes clear from numerous letters of the 1950s and also from the here present journal records (1951 to 1961).
This is where we learn of a group of people who were asked to collect data for Jung, empirical facts for a research project.
This group consisted of Sabi Tauber, Linda Fierz-David, Jung’s daughter Gret Baumann, Hanni Binder, the latter two of whom were experienced astrologers, and others.
It appears Jung hoped to gather as many synchronistic occurrences as possible; he wanted to present a kind of “proof” to substantiate his hypothesis on the reality of the collective unconscious, and ultimately, the unity of psyche and matter.
Basically, he wanted nothing less than to shed light on a still obscure field, which to him was of the greatest philosophical importance, as he writes in the preface to his essay on synchronicity.
He sought to appraise modern science of his ideas on the living reality of the archetype.
At one point, at a colloquium at the Tauber’s in Winterthur, he explains why for him astrology had its justification:” … because there exists an objective psyche.” To substantiate this was his great concern.
In this context, we can now understand the task Sabi Tauber was given.
It consisted of interviewing hospitalized accident patients about how they assessed their psychological state or emotional condition before or during the accident.
Did they remember dreams or extra-sensory perceptions or anything of that sort? (According to Christian Tauber, there is an archive of one hundred respective cases
still waiting to be processed.)
Jung wanted to explore whether a possible synchronistic coincidence could be discerned related to the accident, or, as we might say today, a specific unconscious conditioning
factor, a constellating archetype.
When he and Sabi brooded over tarot cards and geoscopes – and although these sections may seem of little use to some readers of the journal – we should be aware that Jung’s search centers on the great range of questions surrounding synchronicity.
The same holds true for the fact that when he encouraged Sabi to write a paper on the
I Ching and her astrological research.
It was not because Jung was looking for a method to predict the future! It was even his explicit intention to revise the paragraphs on astrological experiments in his
publication on synchronicity, because he was always misunderstood.
He expresses this, for example, in a letter to Prof. Markus Fierz, February 21, 1950 (Collected Works, vol. 18).
Jung knew very well that parapsychological phenomena could not be proven by applying
probability theory – otherwise such phenomena would be causal.
In a letter to Prof. Hans Bender, director of the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, on February 12, 1958, Jung states that his question was aimed at the psychic conditions of their occurrence, and he would abstain from coming up with a semi-physical energetic explanation.
Nothing could be explained at all by giving such phenomena names like telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis etc.
Jung’s interest in the connection of psyche and matter goes very far back, in fact all the way to this student days, when from 1895 onward, he participated in spiritualistic seances.
Now when, in 1951,Sabi quotes Jung in her journal: “In addition, there was the problem
of soul and body,” a problem also alluded to in his essay “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle,” published in 1952, we learn something about the psychological burden brought upon him by these questions.
His whole life long he attempted to shed light on a mystery that he later called unus mundus, in reference to the alchemist Gerhard Dorn.
A few additional comments need to be made in regard to geomancy, which Jung discussed with Sabi.
(For technical details about how to create a geoscope, see the notes in the text.)
Here also, Jung is less interested in fortune-telling than in the exploration of the
archetypal background.
In her book On Synchronicity and Divination, in which Marie-Louise von Franz captures the depth of the entire issue, she calls geomancy a “terrestrified astrology.”
We also refer to her book Number and Time, in which she details the geomancy
technique and its significance for Jungian psychology.
Our account of Jung’s work on synchronicity brings our introduction to a close, with one further note.
It remains to point out the great distress caused to Sabi by the research assignment given to her by Jung.
As hard as she tried, her journal states, she often felt overwhelmed by the complexity of the subject matter.
There are differing accounts among her descendants as to whether this was why Sabi plucked up the courage one day to write to Jung and ask for an audience, or whether it was rather the agonizing marital situation that was the motivation.
Whatever the reason, it can be said with certainty that Sabi’s journal begins with Jung’s answer to her letter, in which he offers her an appointment and describes the way from Bollingen station to his tower.
Sabi gained a very private access to Jung, as it were through the back door – metaphorically and quite literally – just through the hidden wooden door of the tower of Bollingen.
Irene and Andreas Gerber Zurich, December 2020 ~ Irene and Andreas Gerber, Sabi Tauber: Encounters with Jung, Page 7-22
