I also read Jung’s Man and His Symbols in 1979. This was Jung’s last work, written in 1961, just before his death. It was, consciously, his capstone Work, an End of Life Message from the Master and Scholar, so to speak. It was published in 1964 and it immediately became popular with the public, the educated laymen readership, and it went a long way toward making Jung and the whole field of depth psychology more accessible to the public. Also, near the end of his life, Jung wrote an interesting little essay about the UFO phenomenon. Are they real? Or are they mass hallucinations? Bottom line, according to Jung, is that they are a Sign, that they are Signs, that Mankind is in search of a Meaning… a Mythos… a Myth. Like Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and Man and His Symbols, this little essay is one of Jung’s least scholarly and most accessible Works. It is well worth your time if you can still find it.

What is a Mythos anyway?

It is the etymology of the word that reveals the underlying Bardic nature of Mythology. A Mythos is… a Story. This word Mythos comes directly from the Ancient Greek μῦθος. a tale, or a report… a story… a history, actually, therefore, also, conceivably, a biography… a narrative!

And Jung coupled this advanced Idea of Bardistry, as an invention, communication, and preservation, of the racial narratives of Mankind… the Record of Human Culture in all of its diverse glory, with ποιητικός, from ποιέω, meaning… to Make. You see a lot of fresh anthropological ideas promoted by Carl Jung over the years, mainly, via his groundbreaking scholarly works on the underlying relationships between Alchemy and Depth Psychology. But this notion of the Mythopoetic as, quite literally, the dynamic self-creation of the Human narrative through History is quite profound. You find this perspective echoed by Joseph Campbell too. I spent a lot of time listening to commercially available recordings of Joseph Campbell in the late 1990s and I highly recommend them for the deepening of your perspectives on the importance of creative literary or other artistic pursuits and the Spiritual Destiny of Mankind.

You get what I am saying?

Art, Music, Stories, are more than just entertainment.

And making stuff up for public consumption is more than just a hankering to make a fast buck off a paperback.