Flash of Golden Fire : The Birth, Death and Rebirth of the Modern Soul in Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

In the early twentieth century C. G. Jung survived an intense encounter with the unconscious. He did this by giving expression to his inner world in the paintings and dialogues found in the Red Book. Yet Jung felt alone in this work, unable to find a precedent or cultural parallel, until he discovered alchemy. This ancient “protoscience” became the bridge Jung had been seeking between the remote past and the present. Yet between the downfall of alchemy in the eighteenth century and Jung’s Red Book in the twentieth, it seems that there was a gap in the tradition.

According to Jungian analyst and author Thomas Elsner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s great visionary poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is another link in that golden chain. In Elsner’s analysis, Coleridge’s nineteenth century night-sea journey can today be understood as a symbolic self-portrait of the collective unconscious, a self-portrait that, like the Red Book, finds its historical context and continuity in the alchemical tradition.

Continuing the highly esteemed works arising from the Fay Lecture Series, sponsored by the Jung Center, Houston, Elsner’s A Flash of Golden Fire: The Birth, Death, and Rebirth of the Modern Soul in Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” promises to further extend the understanding and appreciation of Jungian principles for practitioners, analysts, others interested in Jungian theory and practice, the psychological dimensions of Romantic poetry, and the evolution of Western consciousness.

THOMAS ELSNER was a graduate of the Jung–Von Franz Center for Depth Psychology in Zurich, Switzerland. He served as a training analyst at the C. G. Jung Study Center of Southern California, the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, and the editorial board of the journal Psychological Perspectives. He operated a private practice in Santa Barbara, California, for over 25 years and served on the faculty of Pacifica Graduate Institute.