The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung

Carl Gustav Jung, along with Sigmund Freud, is one of the two most influential figures of the modern age. His ideas have shaped perceptions of the world. His theories of myth, archetypes & the collective unconscious have become part of popular culture. Now, in this controversial, impeccably researched biography, Richard Noll reveals Jung as an all-too-human genius who, believing he was a spiritual prophet, founded a neopagan religious movement that offered mysteries for a new age. The Aryan Christ is the previously untold story of the 1st 60 years of his life–a story that follows him from his 1875 birth into a family troubled with madness & religious obsession, thru his career as a famous psychiatrist & relationship & break with Freud, & on to his years as an early commentator on the 3rd Reich in the 30s. It contains never-before-published revelations about his life & the lives of his most intimate followers–details that either were deliberately suppressed by his family & disciples or have been newly excavated from archives in Europe & America. Noll traces the influence on his ideas of the occultism, mysticism & racism of 19th-century German culture, demonstrating how his idealization of primitive man has at its roots the Volkish movement of his own day, which championed a vision of an idyllic pre-Christian, Aryan past. Noll marshals evidence to create the 1st full account of his private & public lives–his advocacy of polygamy as a spiritual path & his affairs with female disciples; his neopaganism & polytheism; his anti-Semitism; & his use of self-induced trance states & the pivotal visionary experience in which he saw himself reborn as a lion-headed god from an ancient cult. The Aryan Christ captures the charged atmosphere of Jung’s era & presents a cast of characters no novelist could dream up, among them Edith Rockefeller McCormick–whose story is fully told here for the 1st time; the lonely, agoraphobic daughter of John D. Rockefeller, who moved to Zurich to be near Jung & spent millions to help him launch his religious movement. As Noll writes, “Jung is more interesting…because of his humanity, not his semidivinity.” In giving a fuller portrait of this 20th-century icon, The Aryan Christ is a book with wide implications.