Date: Saturday 30th November 2024 Location: Online
Start time: 2:00pm End time: 5:30pm Type: Webinar

Jung, a Swiss Liberal Protestant, and Ignatius Loyola, a Counter-Reformation Catholic Saint, might seem like odd bedfellows but as Jung saw, there are important connections between their visions of God and religious life. Jung lectured on Ignatius’s ‘Spiritual Exercises’ between 1933 and 1941, after recent engagement with Eastern forms of meditation.

This webinar will discuss his interpretation both of the Exercises and of a crucial mystical vision of Ignatius, which resonated positively and negatively with Jung’s own experience. It will be suggested that he saw Ignatius’s imaginative meditation programme as analogous to his own practice of active imagination and as a vital recuperation of the imagination, after centuries of neglect by the Christian mystical tradition. Finally, Jung’s developing ideas on religious experience as he approached the study of alchemy will be explored, suggesting that for both Jung and Ignatius a religion which is not experiential is effectively psychologically useless.

The subject matter of this event will be spread across two hour-long talks with a break in between; there will also be plenty of time to put questions to the speaker.

Please note that booking for all webinars closes two hours before the advertised start time.