The Taproot Podcast - 🏰Interview on Bollingen Tower with Martin Gledhill

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

📚💡 Exploring the Profound Insights of Carl Jung's "The Red Book" and the Essence of Jungian Psychology 🌌🔑🔮 Delve into the captivating world of Carl Jung's "The Red Book: Liber Novus," where the depths of the human psyche and the realm of the unconscious come to life. Jung considered the years he dedicated to pursuing inner images as the most crucial time of his life, from which everything else flowed. This enigmatic stream from the unconscious flooded him, leading him on a transformative journey of self-discovery and integration. 📖💭 "The Red Book" represents Jung's personal descent into the underworld, akin to the ancient Egyptian practice of opening the mouth of the dead. It is his "Book of the Dead," requiring the sacrifice of blood and the confrontation of unanswered questions from the realm of the deceased. Through this process, Jung realized that coming to terms with the dead is essential for true living, as our lives are intricately entwined with their unresolved queries. 👥🌌 The publication of "The Red Book" in 2009, almost a century after its inception, sparked both intrigue and debate. Although opinions vary on whether Jung would have chosen to publish the book during his lifetime, its significance to the psychologist cannot be understated. Revealed to only a select few confidants and family members, it was a formative period for Jung, exposing him to the depths of the collective unconscious and the forces of the deep mind. This experience profoundly influenced his subsequent work, shaping his theories and concepts concerning the unconscious and the repressed aspects of the human mind. 📚🔮 Jungian psychology, at its core, has two fundamental goals. Firstly, it seeks to integrate and understand the deepest, most repressed aspects of the human mind, paving the way for individuation—the process of becoming aware of and embracing one's true self. Secondly, it aims to navigate this profound exploration without being consumed by the unconscious forces uncovered along the way. It provides a psychological container and lens through which the self can be comprehended and clarified. 💡🔍 While not intended to be a religion, Jungian psychology serves a similar purpose by addressing the functions of the human need for religion, mythology, and the transcendental. It acts as a bridge to religion, encouraging psychology to explore and understand these aspects consciously. Jung hoped that by bringing awareness to the role of religion within humanity, his psychology could help foster a healthier and more mindful relationship with religious and transcendent experiences in our culture. 🌟🌍 Immerse yourself in the rich tapestry of Jungian psychology, where the exploration of the unconscious meets the quest for self-discovery, integration, and understanding. Uncover the transformative power of "The Red Book" and the enduring legacy of Carl Jung's profound insights. 📚🔑💫 🌌📖 #TheRedBook #CarlJung #JungianPsychology 💭🔮 #UnconsciousMind #CollectiveUnconscious #Individuation 🌟🌍 #Religion #Mythology #Transcendence 🔍💡 #SelfDiscovery #Integration #PsychologicalInsights Source: https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-q9gf3-132ff80 Find more at:    Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/ Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml Taproot Therapy Collective 2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216 Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone] Email: [e-mail] The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

Hi, this is Joel Blackstock, and you're listening to the Taproot Therapy Collective podcast. Today we are talking to Martin Gledhill, who's working on his PhD and also a book about Carl Jung's personal project and vacation home, Bollingen Tower. Bollingen Tower is on Lake Zurich, and Jung viewed it in a lot of ways as the culmination of his life's work. Mr. Gledhill is here to talk to us about that. We connected via Zoom while I was on vacation, so bear that in mind. There's places where the connection is a little choppy, and this interview is also available on YouTube if you want to go to the gettherapybirmingham.com YouTube page.

So without further ado, I will roll that now. I'm here with Martin Gledhill, who's an academic who researches Jung architecture and is going to talk about Jung's house in Bollingen, which is kind of a personal project and culminated in the intersection of a whole lot of his lifelong projects and passions. I guess if you want to just kind of start and go over some of your work about Bollingen, I know the listeners will be fascinated. It's not a topic a ton of people know a lot about. So I mean, you're probably in the minority in the world there. Yeah, well, that'd be good.

I mean, it's a kind of bizarre passion that I've got. I suppose I'm a trained architect. So, you know, I've always thought architecture, you know, really could be a bit more meaningful. And then maybe, I don't know, 30, 40 years ago, I started going into therapy, partly because I wasn't very good at relationships. And, and, and I suppose, you know, these two threads, for me have sort of come together. So actually, I made a massive decision to give up my work, give up what I was teaching at university, and just embark on this project.

So it's been running for about seven years. And I mean, I suppose the kind of backdrop is that I think therapeutic practice probably could involve place more, you know, place seems to be sort of absent from the discussion, you know, even in the therapy room, and perhaps hope that's not offensive or difficult to anyone. Anyway, I mean, do you find that in dream work, they make room for place in the sense that you're describing? Or do you mean another way that place can intersect with therapy? Well, I suppose in dream work it it can be sort of um amplified more but i think the the role of what you might call psychic place a sense of belonging or you know the presence of where we live particularly obviously it's very very um potent in a home

less so in uh bigger places and maybe more so or most so in religious environments but I think matter if you put it in terms of matter I think it's kind of slightly pushed out from the kind of therapeutic dialogue particularly in analytical psychology in my experience I mean obviously that might be slightly contentious. So I think why Jung's really interesting is that he begins that journey, doesn't he, through alchemy, you know, an engagement with matter, and Marie von Franz sort of carries the torch literally. But if you think about it, you know, it's quite rare for a psychologist to conceive their family home, Kushnacht,

and to, well, not exactly build Bollingen, but certainly to begin to build Bollingen. And then, in effect, he's operating as an architect in two places. So over to you, final question of a job. No, I think that's a great intro. I mean, it was an attempt to kind of build something with all of the different tools that Jung had found over his life. I mean, I think he kind of was really hungry

for a unified theory of everything almost. Yeah, yeah. On the inside of the mind, you know, he wasn't as existentially concerned. It was phenomenological what is going on inside of me and other people know, he wasn't as, he wasn't as existentially concerned. It was phenomenological. What is going on inside of me and other people that I see and that they feel and that I feel. And a lot of that intersected with Bollingen, but it's not very well understood.

And you saying that the gateway to alchemy is kind of the bridge between the matter and the mind, because you're working on things of the mind through metaphors of matter and science. That's a great intro. I never thought of it that way. It's kind of the unfinished work of analytical psychology, which to a degree Marie von Franz, you know, sort of picked up on. But I suppose, you know, coming at the tower from a different angle, I mean, I have to say that the Jung family have been absolutely wonderful

in their generosity of talking to me about it and you know it it's quite difficult to get into the town and I mean it's a private home so you know jumping over it so the privacy and property of the family I think of you know need to be respected and certainly they respect uh jung's legacy just why a lot of it is is kind of inaccessible in all senses of the word you can't photograph the inside at all even if you're allowed in correct is that is that right well you can go into the i've been there four times now and you can go downstairs but there's a real sense of the above, if you like. The tower has murals and things that people haven't seen. Is that correct? The tower has murals and things that people haven't seen, is that right?

Yeah, yeah. And there are, you know, there's, you know, I would suggest, I probably am only aware of maybe 25, 30 percent of it and I absolutely respect that legacy I mean really the the Jung family well when Jung died he wanted the tower to be left kind of as it was so you know I've had some really amusing moments where I arrived one day and the filament stone was uh providing a very good picnic table, for a youngie, and I thought, oh my, this kind of sacred stone, which, you know, there was no disrespect. It's just a working, living retreat for the heirs of the family.

So coming at it from a different angle, I think the account in Memories, Dreams and Reflections is incomplete, I think I would say. And because people like Sam Dersani have done a lot of work on working out which bits were written by who, no no disrespect to Anil Yaffe, but I think it's incomplete at times a little bit inaccurate you know it's been tidied up basically. Well I mean there's there's chapters of it that the family never wanted published. Yeah. So it is it is objectively incomplete right I mean he wrote things that are not in it. Yeah but even I mean you know so it is it is objectively incomplete right i mean he wrote things that are not in it yeah but even i mean you know so it's incomplete in two ways a there's missing chapters so you

know for example um you know the memory of tony wolf um you know there's this i think alan elms called it was it was elams or someone called it the altification um but i suppose what I'm interested in is that the chapter itself, chapter 8, the Tower, is not really about the Tower. If you think about it, it's only about three pages to talk about the Tower. Then it goes off into ancestors and sort of much wider issues. And that's kind of fine. But do you think, well, the biography of the Tower, in a sense, i think needs to be written the biography of bollingen tower yeah i mean actually that idea came from um just herney who is young sam great grandson and i i was sounds a bit posy this but i was chatting to

him in the lobe show and he just said, oh, I want to write the biography of the tower. What I think he meant was the biography of the people who visited the tower. The family has Jungian, you know, interested people kind of disturbing their privacy all the time from one of, I've just seen accounts where people wander up to it and they say, okay, you know, you can come in,

you can see part of it and they're gracious. People are peeping at it all the time, you know? Yeah. I mean, that's a very nice way of putting it, Joel, the grace. I mean, one, on one occasion, a mate of mine were rowing up to the tower because I wanted to photograph it from the lake, from Lake Zurich. And these people were waving at us and we thought they were basically waving for us to go away. But then we realized they were actually waving

for us to come ashore. So we kind of landed and they were incredibly hospitable, but with a containment in equal measure, it wasn't just sort of open house. So, I think the story of the tower is interesting to tell in the context of place, psychic place. I think MDR is incomplete and actually, you know, in the Jung family there are six architects. His uncle was an architect, his cousin was an architect, his son, his son-in-law, his grandson Andreas and his great-grandson Daniel. So there's this kind of, I owe this information

to Andreas, his grandson, you know there's this kind of architectural thread um which in some sense this is linked to our archaeology you know that jung was interested in archaeology and wanted to be an archaeologist so it's a kind of reverse archaeology isn't it yeah yeah well then sort of digging down building the thing to be discovered by the future instead of discovering the thing you know that left by the past yeah yeah so you know it's absolutely left by the past. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's absolutely fascinating. And at the moment, I'm probably about 92,000 words. And I just keep on, you know, if you think back to the formative places, you know, Laufen, Rhine Falls, Klein-Hunnigan,

you know, in all of these places are clues to the tower. You know, his walking fantasy when he walks along the Rhine when he sees the big ship coming along and constructs a kind of well fortified castle. He's basically constructing place all the time, the attic, the mannequin in the attic. But what seems to happen in MDR is that these places are sort of backgrounded. You know, what comes to the foreground are psychological or theological, philosophical kind of extrapolations.

But the place is somehow lost. That's what I feel my job, if you like, is to do, is to follow his tracks, if you like. Mm-hmm. Which means going to Switzerland a lot. Sure. So over to you, Joel. And maybe some people have a familiarity with Jung

but maybe don't know a lot about Bollingen. I mean, you can't tell the whole story that you're telling in the book, but could you give us kind of a brief history of his relationship with that place? Yeah. Well, essentially, at the beginning, if you're to believe MDR, Bollingen sort of emerges around 1922, 23, just after his mother's death. Now he asked his son, or son-in-law to be, Walter Niasse, who was a very accomplished modern architect, to sketch out a kind of primitive hut. Initially he wanted it to be built in like medieval type architecture, right? Is that right? And Emma says no, it needs to be more contemporary.

And he changes the style a little bit. Not so much, not as far as I'm aware, but I think he wanted it to be a very primitive hut. The, you know, single story kind of round dwelling, you know, much like you would find in East Africa that he visits in 20, whatever it is 25 isn't it 27 yeah when did he go to Africa 25 um 25 26 um and so it's immediately adapted and and requires another another floor but actually there is a sort of back story because he used to sail down uh Lakes Urick

um which takes about maybe half a day, three quarters of a day, depending on the wind, to a place called the Linth Island, which is right at the bottom. And he used to camp there with a mate who was a psychiatrist, I think. And then after a while, the family used to join him camping and he really wanted the tower to be founded or to be built there. So, you know, I think probably Emma said to him, well, look, you know, it's kind of fine,

all this camping, Carl, but, you know, we kind of need something a bit more permanent, you know, given that Kushnick's quite a luxurious house. He was kind of enamored with spaces by water, you know. Yes, he was. Yeah, yeah. The castle that he visited as a young boy on Lake Constance, you know, sort of cemented that kind of allegiance.

Anyway, the locals weren't too keen on him buying the land as a kind of inverted commas witch doctor and so his friend said well why don't you look around a bit closer and basically where Bollingen is now is about a 20 minute canoe ride I'm not very fit so it took me 20 minutes I might've taken him quarter mile by cell and he landed there one day and a young boy called Hans greeted him and he said well you know I'm interested in buying this land they become very good friends he became a kind of surrogate son who helped him a lot in the town so the tower you know the first stage gets built and then about four years later uh the annex what's called the annex or the tower like annex gets built so it's really a holiday home if i was really honest it's a holiday home first of all but

it's not modern there's not electricity i mean it's it's a permanent you pump your water you cook on a wood burning stove i mean it's very uh very rustic retreat from technology yeah yeah and that still is the case you know that you have the water is pumped up from the lake there's an external toilet and there's no electricity um so the building becomes it starts really as a store a holiday home or a storehouse it becomes it acquires this annex and then it acquires a third phase four years later which is called the spiritual tower which only Jung had a key to and it was very

closed and I imagine to be a very... It was his private study when the family wasn't able to go in Yeah, so in a way he's constantly retreating he's retreating from his family he's retreating up and then four years after that,

although I think this is inaccurate, what's called the loggia and the courtyard are added, but I think those are actually two separate phases when you look at the joints in stone and various kind of... And he said he cut the stones for the tower, not the whole house, but the tower himself, or he had some interaction with it is that right well i i've got pictures of i reckon that he and his son france who's an architect and uh walter nias and maybe hans as well probably lift um built these stone walls up to about maybe a metre because you can see a change in style after that. Now, the walls are about at least a metre thick, so to build that on your own with no artisanal skill

is a big ask. So I think they kind of just gave up, but they just became realistic and they hired some Italian builders to build it. So it starts to be in effect built by others. And if you think about it during this time, Jung is away a lot. He's in Africa, he's in America,

later on he's in India, you know, she's really traveling, he's really going to going. So, you know, who's the author of the tower in a way yeah um and then eventually in um uh in the uh in the 50 in the early 50s um he adds a third story or sometimes known as the fifth episode which actually is i think is designed by his son france and that's a much more open space um you of the other spaces are very chthonic, very enclosed, very mysterious and as you've indicated quite medieval. So it's basically got these five stages. You might argue that the filament stone is a kind of sixth stage or you know a

four plus. Can you tell us about the filament stone which is maybe like not the capstone but the end stone it's the last piece that he makes as kind of an ending? Well the quarry that supplied, well there's a series of quarries in Bollingen and the story goes that the quarry that supplied, were asked to supply a cornstone, which actually was supposed to be triangular, arrived as a cube and the Mason said, well, you need to take it away, it's just wrong. And Jung sort of, the very intuitive man,

spotted it and immediately, in a sense, recognised its kind of charge, its psychic charge. So it's a cube, a cubic stone, and, you know, has links to kind of alchemy. And he carved it. He carved three sides of it.

So he was really interested in the idea of the quaternity, you know, the three plus one pattern. So one side is blank. One side has the figure of, a figure with a circle around it. With a mandala? It's kind of a mandala, well it's probably not a mandala, it's more, I can never pronounce it, the teleforce, but you know this kind of figure in the middle and various other Latin and Greek phrases.

But the kind of Christian resonance is interesting because the kind of discarded stone, the unwanted stone is a kind of trope for Christ. The stone the builder rejected is an idea as he spoke to Jung when the builder is rejecting the stone. Yeah, yeah. So it's outside the the curtilage of the tower. During the winter they put a little sort of copper cap on it and this is actually where there was a picnic table, you know, it's kind of wonderful. And you

know Jung is often pictured sitting by it and he argues in MDR that all his work was encapsulated in that stone everything he had to say was in that stone so it's a very precious and for some sacred object. And then he carved other elements of the tower. He carved a bear, which has been associated with Russia, but could equally be associated with Saint Minrad, whose cult belongs to that area. Pegasus, there's the tomb, the engraving to his wife, so it's a very tattooed building externally. So it's... He's starting to use it almost as a diary. Yeah, that's a really lovely idea Joel, it's a kind of, it's a diary, it's a

memory aid, it's a body, it's kind of not really a building in a way, but of course it's a diary, it's a memory aid, it's a body, it's kind of not really a building in a way. Of course it is a building, but it's much more, you know, obviously I'm slightly addicted to it, so I perhaps read things into it, but it has a very definite sense of place. And these engravings and paintings and just the whole the darkness of it is very very alluring it is you know literally dark it's something you can't see inside of either because you can't get inside or because it's lit by candles and lamps, it's a castle. Yeah, I mean, the annex bit, the second phase, is a bit more open because it had a big sort of barn door,

which is slightly subsumed in the third phase. But it's sort of dark, as you've alluded to, in all senses. You know, there's kind of... And really my own work has been going through all the different biographies and pulling out little memories that people have to in order to get to sort of piece together the missing bits if you like so it's sort of a big detective story um well and i know samu um samshadani and james hillman in the lament for the dead book one of the things that they talk about is that Jung is retreating into the highest part of the tower, which is like the most personal spot for him where no one is allowed in, not even the Mistress Tony Wolfe or his wife Emma as much. You know, maybe they see it, but it's his space.

And at the same time, he's grieving that he's not understood by the world. So he's retreating inward, but also grieving and sad that he is not understood by more people or can't bring his internal vision out in a way. And him spending time in that internal vision of the top of the tower helps him clarify it and rarefy it and process it so that he can bring out a revelation to people so that not just he can have the experience internal, but a lot of the Jungian ethics, his personal ethics was that you can retreat into the unconscious, you can retreat into the self, but you need to bring something back for other people. You need to bring something back that is not just for you, but for everyone.

And I think one of the biggest arguments in that book is that what he brings out of it is that it's not just that we have the obligation to go past the unlived life of the parent and to go past you know where our parents didn't quite um finish their lives and selves but we have the responsibility to go past the unlike life of all of the dead in human culture all the things that humanity has not dealt with all the things that humanity has not done yet and that we need to find a way to transcend you know our animal nature we need to find a way to transcend um our bias and our not just personal shadow but our cultural and human shadow and that that's kind of their argument i think in moment for the dead is that that's what he is saying with the red book um and a lot of that is is made while he's contemplating the murals in that tower and painting them yeah no that's very well put joel

i think that the in fact shantosani argues that really that the tower and i agree with him the tower is a continuation of the red book yeah you know it's a three-dimensional tower the red book is brought out of the tower in a certain way even if he's not working on it there he's spending the formative time in the cell fair and then bringing it out. That's the relic, you know? Yeah. Well, actually, if you look at quite a lot of the pictures in the Red Book, I mean, particularly the Mandala one of the fort,

the, he's, well, there's actually one, I can't remember the chapter, I think it's chapter two um there's a there's an element called the castle by the lake which actually i think the date of that is 1913. it's pretty well a vision of the tower as in you know like you know 20 30 40 years later so i think it's a kind of ongoing you know it almost transcends time that there's this kind of slippage between the imagery of the the red book and the um uh the tower itself um so um i was gonna say something else and it's just gone out of my mind um yeah i know the the yeah it's i mean really what's called the spiritual tower, which is the, let's call it the third phase, 1931, I think has quite a lot of link to Ravenna, his trip to Ravenna.

But I think that is his inward place, you the most connected timber place the fifth episode at the top is much more transparent and it has a timber frame so it's kind of open to the lake so you've got this kind of delicious um it's not really a dualism because it sort of transcends it you know there's this kind of closed openness in equal measure i mean as you said earlier on that I think his disenchantment with the world, you know he puts in terms of like Merlin he had to retreat to a tower in the wood you know because the world was too damn stupid to sort of understand. I think it is a kind of, well, Giegrich has been very critical of that kind of renouncing of the world,

you know, equals sort of psycho Disneyland, which is pretty harsh, I think. And he's not alone, you know, people like Rilke, Rainer Maria Rilke, or the Irish poet Yeats, they all retreat to to the powers. So there is a kind of post-war pattern. And I think, too, Jung, one of the things David Tacey pointed out on our last interview was that Jung borrows a lot of ideas from Hinduism. And one of the images is that relationship between Brahman and Atman, that the self and God have a relationship and are through religion merged together,

but, or ritual or whatever, you know, whatever you want to call it, liminal space. But I think another one that doesn't get as much, it's not talked about as much that he takes from Hinduism is that there's the idea of Dharma and M moksha in Hinduism that you have to have a world renunciation, giving up your belongings, wandering and retreating from the world into the woods. That is part of spirituality, but so is the world sustaining, having children, raising a family, giving to the poor, contributing to society, using your intellect. That also is the way that you as a responsibility of the religious person so the relationship between those

and in the Hindu tradition there's a lot of some people say well you do this at the beginning of your life and at the end you go into the woods or well you do this and then you take the realization and you bring it back into life and you know they try and because these are opposites but the tension of those opposites is something that was interesting to Jung. And I kind of see some of that in Bollinger, that he's retreating into himself at the same time that he's trying to formulate something to bring out of himself. I don't know if that makes sense.

No, absolutely. I think there's two things that come to mind when you talk about that. The first inverts the story. It becomes a businessman, doesn't it? And then returns, you know, that story. But more potently, I think, Bruder Klaus, the Swiss mystic, who Mark Twain was quite playfully,

playful about because he was a saint who had a wife and 10 kids and then when he was 50 he just kind of left home so you know and actually Jung talks about Broderick House quite a lot it's that balancing of you know in effect family life and and the solitary life um it's kind of inevitable that it splits isn't it in a way Christian Acton and um bollingen when he's writing the red book in the evenings you know while he's seeing patients and spending time with his children and family which he says is an anchor his family and his children were an anchor that saved him from psychosis while he was exploring a psychotic episode yeah i suppose what we should remember though that actually

and I don't mean this with any cynicism that Bollinger is a holiday home and actually a lot of photographs you know the kids are playing he's sitting by the lake you know playing with the water so you know it isn't this kind of culling of family life. It's not a church it's not it's not supposed to be. It's a retreat for a family. Yeah. And, you know, I suppose that's why he has to find a retreat within a retreat, if you like, which was your point.

Yeah. You know, kind of going up. I mean, I guess, I mean, he used to put up a yellow flag partly for his neighbor to, in effect, repel their children because they would come round and knock. And the yellow flag meant, you know, no, you know, I'm writing. You know, just... I didn't know that, yeah. Yeah, so there's these signals. And I think, you know, the enclosure that includes the loggia,

really, he describes as, I felt a need for a piece of fenced in land but really he probably got fed up with people like me coming along the lake saying oh there's carl jung and his wife so he spent time in bollington with einstein too drinking red wine and talking about physics and ultimately coming up with the theory of synchronicity didn't he yeah well that was the einstein's paoli wasn't it I think Wolfgang Pauli I thought I thought Einstein was I don't know I know yeah so I didn't mean to I mean I I I'm not sure but I don't know what kind of wine Pauli liked it I know him and Jung and Einstein shared

a passion for red yeah well I think Wolfgang Pauli because he has really interesting double character I think he probably liked any wine, I should think. But, you know, Bollinger's used, you know, I think we could call it a spiritual place or a sacred place. And his encounters with Victor White and, you know, the controversy and the construction of Answer to Job have a lot to do with the tower and rather sadly when they kind of fall out um when they meet after that jung only invites victor white to kushnakt he doesn't you know he's going to have lost his rights if you like. So in a sense, the tower is slightly politicised in a logical

sense. But yeah, you know, I mean, another interesting thing to think about is the way that it becomes a tower, because it's not a tower. Not a tower. And if you go back through the letters, early on, he talks about as my country seat, my little place in the country, and then a few years later it becomes my tower with a little t, and then it becomes the tower. But it's an internal space that's being brought up there, it's not as much of a physical change. I mean he does build a tower but when you see it you see a house, it doesn't really register as a tower Yeah true, I mean there are tower-like elements

I mean they say the spiritual tower is quite slender and elongated but the first tower is quite stumpy but it doesn't matter because, but what I find interesting is that it starts to breed its own symbol if you like

Yeah and you know that it starts to breed its own symbol, if you like. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, you know, he would declare in MDR that, you know, he wanted to sort of constellate or solidify, concrete his ideas in form. And, you know, there's this kind of logical move to architecture. I think that's kind of true in a way but I think it is sort of a narrative that's slightly constructed. I mean I don't mean any disrespect to you but I love the man but I think it is an ordinary place that becomes extraordinary you know rather than it is an extraordinary

place but you know you can't that's an interesting perspective i mean so i guess like two questions one you know what do you have any idea or any speculation what is in the tower you know what's up there that no one has seen or and two you you know, Carl Jung's a guy who sees all these patterns in life, religion, self, and starts to inventory them. You know, do you see patterns in Bollingen, have a sense of what he's doing? Is there quaternity symbolism or some kind of symbolic element that you feel like you've noticed that no one has seen yet? I'm not sure if I'm the only person to notice it, but I think I'm just going to read something actually which I've got on the screen

which might help. This is a letter to a guy called Peter de Brandt written in 1959 and this is a student of architecture who writes to him about sort of archetypal patterns in architecture. And his response broadly is the circle and the square are connected with the idea of shelter and protection, place of the hearth, concentration, the family and the small animals. And on a higher level with the symbol of the quatuor, I don't know if I pronounced that correctly, as the dwelling place of the inner man, the abode of gods. So I think in more direct answer to your question, I think the circle and the square oscillate and then sort of constellate into this triangle. So it's a kind of sort of essay in psychodeometry, but then you get these kind of intermediate spaces

that can't be geometrized, if that's a word. So it's kind of geometric and not in equal measure. But you do see the geometry kind of talking to it. You see his visual thought process there. That's fascinating. Yeah. And I think, you know, the role of France Young, his son, is very underestimated. There's a very lovely book that's just come out, which I'll mention, I can't find it, but anyway,

it's called About France and it's by an American woman, so you should be able to get it in your country, that talks about her visit or part of it talks about her visit to the tower with Franz Jung, who probably was involved with almost all of it. And so he could unpack some of the kind of narrative and some of the complexity of complicated geometry sort of crashing into each other. So I think in answer to your question, I think there's the circle and the square very evident and we can trace that back to the painting that he looks at in the rectory in Klein-Huneggen. It's a painting called the David with the Head of Goliath by Guido Reni, which has David leaning on a circular column

with the head of Goliath on a square column. And he's absolutely transfixed by this in the dark, in the dark sequestered room. And I think in his youth, attics, towers, chapels, squares, circles gather. You know, in a way, I'm probably seeing that into it, but I think they gather around him. Castles, he draws castles. Architecture in the Red Book has a lot of, you know, a circle above a town,

above a tower, above, you know, things. Yeah. And the fort that is drawn in the Red Book actually is a fort that pretty well existed during Jung's time. It was destroyed in the Treaty of Paris, but its ramparts existed.

And it's not exactly like the picture in the Treaty of Paris that its ramparts existed and it's not exactly like the picture in the Red Book but he reconstructs it in his mind as this kind of star fort so I think he's looking you might say unconsciously in his formative years

and consciously when he goes to the stupas of India and the the council house a council to call to the council and building in Fatima Sikri in India he's he's searching out sacred geometry but in his youth it's more it's sort of it's not so much in the background but it's more unconscious I suppose. Well can you clarify a stake of geometry just a little bit for people who may not be as aware of western esoteria? Yeah well I mean quickly put I think that

you know if we go back to that that quote from jung to the to the student that the essence essence i suppose uh is contained the essence of man and the essence of god as a kind of mystical union is contained in um pure geometry you know it's a kind of absolute it's almost platonic isn't it it's a kind of absolute um so you know there are different permutations of that because then you go into sort of polygons and hexagons i mean for example the uh most baptistries are octagonal the eight you know seven plus one you know the rebirth and i believe well hannah but barbara hannah says that the spiritual tower you know which you can't go into it has eight facets inside i don't think it's octagonal but i think it has eight facets so you know that's a deliberate move the um the font when you go into the tower where he pumps water

is eight-sided so you know i mean there's these these kind of you see him playing with space and geometry to convey meaning and math to a certain extent to convey meaning yeah i do and then every so often either he's away or you know of inverse, it's sort of,, because the inverse of the kind of awkward, kind of asymmetric things have to adjust to the next sort of chapter of the geometry. So it's a really complex and non-dualistic array, really, which I find fascinating yeah and so any idea what's at the top of the tower what the private

rooms in Bollingen are do you have any speculation or heard any rumors I found one picture of the fifth episode which interestingly is a kind of concession to habitability because it's got I believe

a coal fire. And so they used to hoist up coal because, you know, Jung was, you know, 80, you know, around that time. So, you know, it wasn't really viable to move wood. And the picture looks as though it's certainly in part lined with timber and very much looks out over the lake and I find it quite moving because he talks about the other bollingen after death and that this kind of aspect to the beyond. It was a liminal space for him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a transition between, in effect, life and death and one biographer, I've forgotten his name, remembers seeing Jung sat in the spiritual tower which is the next floor down on the second floor, absolutely absorbed in his work, you know, in this other world um so it's kind of a gateway to the tower yeah yeah and then you know he talks about the mountains and the you know the majesty of the lake that you know as you say he wants to live by water and the majesty of the mountains and the beyond which ironically is is where the stone came from for the tower you know the quarries on the other side of the lake

or one of them so it's evocative and and in a sense the closure of the first tower and the super closure of the third tower open and you know it's a kind of diastole isn't it really if they open and close with these other elements and it's hard sometimes to fit all the elements of architecture into a conversation well but you you see the space kind of having a conversation but it's hard to articulate it because it's a visual language it's not a cognitive you know um language uh word based language but it sounds like you have a real sense of what he's doing there and how he saw it you know after spending the time you've spent there yeah well i suppose the other thing we can draw into our conversation is the house dream

1909 when he's coming back with from america you know i think a lot of the tower i don't think the tower is a replica of the dream but it has elements of the dream in it and i think what's interesting about that is that it's kind of um palimpsest structure you know that one thing lying on top of another when he discovers the body of the um the the soldier he it gives the seller prior to that i mean it's not literally a cellar, but you know, it's got this kind of subterranean space if you think of the dream and You know, I think the Well, I've written a whole chapter on that the relationship of the dream

as a kind of Guide if you like to the tower without it being a The building is a dream, you know so that's another aspect well is there anything that we don't get to that you feel like is important about volagen those are kind of the questions that i had i don't know a ton about it other than just what comes up in memories dreams reflections and other people's writing about you anything that you feel like is important we haven't hit on? Yeah.

Well, I think what is important is to... This isn't the best answer, but I'll start with it. Is to trace it deeper into his psychic and physical history. I think Bollinger's configured as this kind of last chapter, if you like, of his work. I think it's much more almost circumlendically, you know, that it's this kind of... It grows as he grows. Yeah, and I think...

I have a sense, I've not been entirely been able to constellate this, is that he, in a sense the building is designing itself. It has a kind of architectural unconscious. He was listening to the place and then helping it be birthed. It wasn't his blueprint that he was just building yeah yeah and he talks about that because when he writes to christina morgan who also built a tower in america um he says well actually when you start start your building you'll you'll know that it releases all sorts of spirits it doesn't go in the spirits but um ghoulies or something like that you

know so there is this literally genius... Spectres, maybe, is that the word? Spectre, is that the word? No, anyway, you know, we get the idea. And so I think he's listening, which is an architectural act, but I think

it's much richer than that. I think the building is leading his ideas, responding to his ideas. You know, if you look at his diagrams as you trace them through the collective works, they become much more three-dimensional. So I think there's this kind of traffic. He's paying religious attention to the space and the building. Absolutely, yeah. And then a second point is the kind of legacy of the tower. So Marie Van Frans built a tower,

well, it was designed by Frans Jong's son. And I'm very grateful to Gotti who lives there, who shared with me the drawings, which are beautiful drawings of this tower. So her tower becomes the kind of perfect tower in vertical commerce, because it's this quadrate, you know, it doesn't have to evolve.

It's just this fixing. And Christina Morgan's tower is this very slender, circular thing. So the circle and the square come back, you know, in this kind of legacy. I mean, I just think they're all fascinating. And I suppose, you know, I think Marie-Verun France got a bit fed up with Jung saying, well,

you know, your tower needs to be like, this is my tower. You know, just get out of it. But I think that the main point, to answer your lead is is that it's the reciprocity it's a reciprocity between place psyche ideas it's a kind of psychic place you know and um and i suppose it's not a singular ambition It's about the voice of the natural world, the lake lapping in, those who visit, Tony Wolfe. Tony Wolfe's role must have been enormous in the tower. Franz Jung's, you know, the builders, you know.

So this idea of this kind of solitary figure with this solitary kind of symbol of that is reductive i think well yeah that's a living it's a living symbol for sure so any speculation on on things that are there that hasn't haven't been seen or any rumor or do you like the mystery of that you know, it's not ever fully open or known? I like the mystery. Initially, I was going to ask the Jung family, and maybe one day I'll be brave enough to do this,

to say, could I measure the whole of this building, do a drawing of the whole of the building? So there'd be like a blueprint of it. I don't think there are blueprints because I think I've tried to track some of them would have had building some estimates would have had building permits but there was a fire in the

St. Garland archive and I I don't know if they were in there but I think I have the sense that they don't exist or don't exist now. But then more recently, maybe this is post justified. I just think, in fact, one of my great grandsons, Daniel said to me,

well, it means different things to different people. I think it has to just be universal and it's, well, not universal in a way, you know, it's very sort of personal as well as being universal so i'm kind of fine with the mystery but that's nice well you know it's kind of um every time i go i see something else and you know obviously you know you're just one slightly in conversation with people and you're trying to be polite and respectful and you can't take photographs, but out of the side, if you are, you notice something can, you know, it's always giving. It's always coming alive.

And it's still used. It's not a museum. I mean, it's, it's still used as he intended, left almost as is by the family for a holiday house. Sometimes they're on holiday there and sometimes it's empty. Yeah, I mean, I think that it would be a great shame if it, I think Jung would not be pleased if it became a museum. You know, obviously that's happened to Freud's Vienna home

and actually the London home as well, which is is fine so it's not to decry people who've gone down that route but I think I mean the way it was explained to me is that it would be difficult to show people around because the stairs are so narrow but I think that's really a kind of you know sort of batting away the problem this is a home for the for the young family forever you know and so should it be you know yes but um but you know that said as you've observed that they're very accommodating in um you know if you knock on the door um you know which i think is incredible most of us wouldn't do that wouldn't't we? We'd say... Especially with this amount of people who come.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think they try and organise things when people come at the same time. But of course, for me, I always wanted just a personal conversation, you know, just to, you know, please, please, please, you know,

tell me something that is, it will feed my passion if you like well is there anything that we can point people to who want to find more about your work or pre-order your book or a website i mean where can we redirect them people that are interested in what you've what you've said here well i'd be happy for you to share my email um um should i read that out or or you can or i can also put it in the in the podcast notes the show notes if you want yeah um because the the moment i'm hoping that my phd will be um well at least written uh by perhaps january february and then I'm really hoping it becomes a book so in answer to question about a book that's waiting. I do sometimes lectures

I've done have been recorded and I'd happily do a lecture for someone if you know that because obviously a lot of this is quite visual and so if we needed to illustrate things more I could do that. But a person that would be, I know that you approached Lucy first, Lucy Huskinson, my supervisor, writes a lot on it so i think that there's everything pardon uh nichi like she does a lot nichi in architecture also yeah yeah she in fact she's in the process of um finishing a book on that so her book um the architecture of the mimetic self uh i think is an important very very important book and then obviously i'm biased but i i do feel that and then claire uh claire marcus cooper wrote a beautiful paper called house symbol of self um which is available comparatively easy as a pdf so those and then more recently thomas bar Barry has written about architecture in this sense but in terms of the tower itself

I'm hoping that's my job because it would put a hold of this in the side of the ship if somebody else was yeah but of course it would come from a different perspective and be different so I think we have to probably wait um I don't know six months or something but hopefully you know 2023 the book will be uh the book will be for sale so um definitely Google and I'll share your email address too if people want a personalized talk or presentation yeah sorry um what would be um lovely about the 1920 18 no 2023 is it would be 100 years after the tower so that's my that's my kind of um aim but it's i i it's a glorious obsession that I've been dramatic. I've sort of given up everything to do. So I think the story or a story needs to be told about it,

which is really why we're talking, isn't it? But, you know. Well, Martin, your passion is beautiful. I really appreciate you sharing that with everybody. And, you know, I will definitely get linked to your email address and then I hope to read your book one day. So thank you, Joe, for the opportunity. I mean, obviously, what helps is to be able to succinctly summarize what one's doing. So I want to thank you for the opportunity um and who knows you know um i think we need you know it's an ecological argument really isn't

if you really zoomed up how do we belong to ourselves and to place you you know, that's really what we're talking about. And so, but thank you. Yeah, of course. And I thank you. Thank you so much for your time.