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Call this still-early part of his literary career “Shakespeare vs Love” as his Rape of Lucrece and Sonnets go into much more complex area of the psyche than many of his peers, then and now, dared to go. With the former, there is foundation laid for all his other Roman tragedies (including the tragi- parts of Cymbeline). Yet the Sonnets, what exactly was going on in that great mind?

The gracefulness of the first four brief lessons is how Rovelli captures the unexplained nature of everything from General Relativity to the Standard Model and relates these world-changing discoveries in terms of the sky, the stars, earth and waves. There are uncertainties found in the quanta, quarks, galaxies and supposedly empty space yet these have the effect of adding depth to a tale told in elementary particles.

Certainly one of the messier plays to radically alter theatre history; hard to imagine what Brecht’s Shakespeare in Love or Bohemian Rhapsody would look like. And yet, for all the ups and down in Brecht’s (and Weill’s) career, this comic opera appears to be the playwright’s perennial favourite, as he constantly refers to it in Brecht on Theatre. Like the prologue “Mack the Knife” it swings.

A final section beyond time and space leaves the world of physics for the psychic, with many mentions of out-of-body, near-death and UFO experiences from his paranormal friends. It had some effect of my conscious as I found myself jumping from one chapter to the next, not recognizing what I just read or finding the bookmark moved ahead of my reading. Perhaps these are symptoms of my theorized chronesthetic Aspergers?

I didn’t expect another analysis of Aurora consurgens so soon, but her psychology students and future alchemists voted for her to walk through her recently published text much to my benefit because she acknowledges that it is a mysterious puzzle, but one that can reveal much about the soul and Self if attended to therefore worth piecing out the jigsaw of mismatched biblical quotations and alchemical recipes.

More confessions from the author of his paranormal experiences with psychics, healers and those who can see the human energy field. At times it can be easy to confuse, or easily dismiss, his claims with the peculiar worlds he and his clairvoyant friends believe. His book may preach to that choir of which I am already a part, but it comes with his note of extreme caution from quantum physics: we create such realities.

More confessions from the author of his paranormal experiences with psychics, healers and those who can see the human energy field. At times it can be easy to confuse, or easily dismiss, his claims with the peculiar worlds he and his clairvoyant friends believe. His book may preach to that choir of which I am already a part, but it comes with his note of extreme caution from quantum physics: we create such realities.

Crawling out of the unconscious sea of fish images, Jung finds his figurative legs with his psychological understanding of Gnosticism, less of a heretical dismantle of early Christian beliefs but rather an archetype to those familiar biblical stories. Evolving further along the aeon, his modern psychology takes on many of the curious uncertainties of quantum physics that he acknowledges came from Pauli and von Franz.

Switching to Arabic alchemical texts, or at least one of the many that had its impact on Europe by inspiring the Renaissance, gives over to lectures from the Far East: Secret of the Golden Flower and Zen Buddhism. At least von Franz is aware that her scheduled lectures don’t really follow the syllabus yet allow her students to offer observations based upon Senior’s De chemia plus a unwholesome monk.

Fascinating facts about fish, mostly legends but someone at various points in history discovered the mysterious qualities of jellyfish or Echeneis and had to figure out how they fit into the natural philosophy of one’s day. Jung, as ever, looks to the alchemical angle, how substance mixed with substance in an attempt to unite the mind and matter. There is even an admission that modern psychology produces fool’s gold.

More development of the epic theatre with examples of musicality, poetry and popularity, raising a few questions about how widely known Brecht’s theatre was in his day and continues to be. How many people saw his new style as something revolutionary and were there critics who claim he was not revolutionary enough (aside from Augusto Boal)? Has gest been taken up by other artists or is it still quaintly Brecht’s idea.

Really leaning into the Christ as fish metaphor, Jung looks beyond Christian imagery to other cultures around the Mediterranean Sea for their take on a primordial Self emerging from the sea. Leviathan becomes a dragon, one of two that will either bring ruin, feed the devout multitude or simply disappear. Jung today would probably have both the Jesus and the Darwin fish ornaments on the back of his hybrid-powered car.

Really leaning into the Christ as fish metaphor, Jung looks beyond Christian imagery to other cultures around the Mediterranean Sea for their take on a primordial Self emerging from the sea. Leviathan becomes a dragon, one of two that will either bring ruin, feed the devout multitude or simply disappear. Jung today would probably have both the Jesus and the Darwin fish ornaments on the back of his hybrid-powered car.

Apart from his valiant attempt to keep Germany socialist without an obnoxious Nationalism, Brecht also reveals himself to be a worldly technological determinist fascinated by how projected film and recorded noises add to an epic production rather than messing up aristotelean unities. Alienation is now his à la mode for engaging with audiences beyond the fourth wall, ironically his exile will end with the Berlin Wall.

Having just submitted my the official first draft of my thesis to my advisors, I have a couple weeks of me-time to discover who is self my ethnographic research was trying to uncover. Fortunately I had Jung to guide me on this two thousand-year quest, pointing out that the birth of Jesus (not a lil’ baby born on Christmas Day, Boney M.) was actually a Pisces like me while that other fish emerged with the Renaissance.

Decided I should drive right in to the midpoint of Brecht’s career, where he had to leave Germany for life-or-death reasons, and had many doors open (Denmark and the Soviet Union, not yet unAmerican enough to be chased out of the United States) due to his epic theatre and eagerness to embrace film, projections and stage mechanization. He still prefers Berlin as the lead light for modern theatre, just not his anymore.

An elaboration on two of the most prominent archetypes Jung empirically encountered, the shadow and the syzygy, get their own brief chapters. But first is his description of the ego, which is not necessarily an archetype but more like how someone experiences these two primal instincts as part of the journey to discovering one’s self. Pre-woken attitudes towards gender appear as Jung tells of anima’s greatest victory.

One last bit of tension, knowing that the war happened and “peace in our time” failed, becomes whether von Hartmann escapes the path of treachery and deceit laid out for him. In a similar way, Legat must face a his own ordeal on the homefront with an unfaithful wife and a going-nowhere career for a Prime Minister ingloriously on his way out. Luckily these two protagonists get to have their happy end before the storm.

It is like I have reached the farthest point away from the famous Renaissance playwrights, Shakespeare, Webster, Marlowe and Fletcher, with Tourneur’s Atheist’s. Incest, murder, ghosts, and just about every tenth line a naughty innuendo. I don’t know if late-Early Modern English authors had the expression “that takes the cake” but it would probably have been something more like “that’s so Atheist’s Tragedy!”

Closing out this volume with chapters on individuation and the therapeutic importance of the mandala, Jung summarizes whole decades of his work while leaving things open to continue in his second volume Aion. Showing some evolution of his idea for the collective unconscious based upon what his patients presented, he also records the trauma of life in Europe just before WWII and its hateful misuse of alchemy.

Two fascinating approaches to understanding reality from inside the mind and out there in the universe. Of course, the more that Pribram and Bohm worked out their holographic models, the lesser such a distinction between inside and out mattered, and an implicit wholeness suddenly started answering questions that science simply couldn’t. This leads Talbot to conjure up the Jung and Pauli mashup known as synchronicity.

The early chapters of this book, a transcript of von Franz’ nine lectures, are titled Greek, but she and her students investigate many of the Egyptian roots of alchemy, which makes a lot of sense as the older civilization was more concerned with physical change, from Isis and her angelic advice to the Osiris-like preparation of the dead. Unlike philosophical Greeks, the Chemists are lil’ Mary-Lous burning tree resin.

The early chapters of this book, a transcript of von Franz’ nine lectures, are titled Greek, but she and her students investigate many of the Egyptian roots of alchemy, which makes a lot of sense as the older civilization was more concerned with physical change, from Isis and her angelic advice to the Osiris-like preparation of the dead. Unlike philosophical Greeks, the Chemists are lil’ Mary-Lous burning tree resin.

The slow and extremely low-stakes operation to get the Prime Minister to read a document seems so particular and controlled that neither Legat nor von Hartmann could add a syllable more to their conversation. Even with an added bit of tension of Sturmbannführer Sauer eventually getting the drop on the plot, it still would not have altered much of the historical timeline. So what was really going on between these men?

Another free land tech journalist following the same trodden path between a geeky childhood to skeptical early adopter who became a golly-gee enthusiast once the Oculus Rift was sold to Facebook. I suspect there will be other routes taken that beer away from the virtual intimacy of cybersex explored in Rubin’s book. There’s no mention in the index of Artaud, but not that we need to hear that old story all over again!

The conference of colonialists begins with noted absence of Czechoslovakia to determine what will happen to the Sudetenland, and both von Hartmann and Legat are brought within a few blocks of each other, even Chapter Six alternates within its pages between their individual points of view. They have both been regulated menial tasks by the officious upper intermediaries will keep the two friends and both nations apart.

Taken the less trodden path into the psyche, in this section Jung looks at fairytales and trickster legends to uncover the archetypes most rational adult ignore or bury away in the unconscious. Spirit seen as superstition much to the detriment of people like Jung who survived two world wars and still sees humanity making the same mistakes. His inquiry into tricksters showcases how asinine we were long before YouTube.

Travel to Munich from London and Berlin takes about the same time: forever! The Lockheed Electra transporting Legat and his prime minister only takes three hours, while the Fürherzug takes twelve (including the side trip to Austria to pick up another dictator). But for both Legat and von Hartmann, it is far too soon to be returning to place of their last meeting, or dare I say tryst? It explains Pamela’s disinterest.

Have VR studies led me this far away from reality and into an holographic universe? The way reality has been running for the past quarter of a century since Talbot’s book was published and the author died, the standard model of reality hasn’t really been that desirable of an existence. Who wouldn’t want to rather be projected from someone’s mind, the same way as Princess Leia was. But from whose mind is our universe?