An urgent call to humanity’s soul…
Welcoming Our Gods Back Home brings the wisdom of Psychological Mysticism to the religious, political, and cultural divides that threaten our species and planet. This book validates the universality of numinous experiences and challenges all forms of religious and political nationalism that claim divine election, validation, power, and authority. Authoritarian claims in the United States and around the world are fueled by long-standing religious delusions of external, supernatural, interventionist beings variously named gods, goddesses, and, more recently, God. Such claims promote unconscious cult behavior by leaders and their followers. Carl Jung spoke often about the dynamics and dangers of mob psychology.
From the perspective of Psychological Mysticism, our gods are internal, intrapsychic experiences, images, and resources to support our organic connection to the mysterious Sacred Source of the universe and to support our at-one-ment with all else. Psychologically, healthy individuals, religions, and institutions view the universe as an inter-connected, inter-related, and inter-dependent web of being.
Jungian psychoanalyst Dr. Jerry R. Wright considers welcoming our gods back home to the human psyche, where they were birthed and where they belong, to be our most urgent psychospiritual task. Until that happens, our species will likely continue to do great harm to ourselves, to each other, and to our Earth home.
Welcoming Our Gods Back Home completes the trilogy “Jungian Psychology and the Future of Our Species.” The two previous volumes are Reimagining God and Religion (Chiron, 2018) and A Mystical Path Less Travelled (Chiron, 2021). The trilogy challenges individuals to invest in the power of individual consciousness in general, and religious consciousness in particular, in order to heal our collective religious and political pathology. To that end, recognizing, withdrawing, and owning our personal and collective shadow becomes the best gift we can offer the future of our species.
From Dr. Wright: These three volumes provide the reader with an introduction to the Analytical Psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, especially his concern for the recovery of soul in all aspects of life, including religion. The trilogy also provides an introduction to Psychological Mysticism, an interim psychospiritual paradigm as we await a new collective myth. The three volumes are part of my personal and professional testament, a kind of memoir. They bear witness to my lifelong search for meaning that combines religion and depth psychology.
Praise for Welcoming Our Gods Back Home
No one collects old light bulbs after the light has gone out, but we tend to hang on to the formative images of our history and wonder why they are no longer numinous to us. In this book, Jungian analyst Jerry Wright reminds that all encounters, all, are experienced within, and explores our complicity in the formation of religious images and concepts. The ultimate otherness of the Other, what many have called God, obliges us to track how these images rise in us, are framed by our human equipment, and thus speak more of our psychologies than point one to the mystery. Nonetheless, he notes that our openness to the numinosity all about us, within us, opens the modern to encounter the mysteries anew.
- James Hollis, Ph.D., is a Jungian analyst, author of many books including Tracking the Gods: The Place of Myth in Modern Life.
Presbyterian pastor and Jungian analyst Jerry Wright takes us on a reflective journey exploring the death of the monotheistic myth of “Father,” living outside of the psyche, as a projection of shadow. Beginning with a description of the current political godhead that is instilling fear through a misuse of power, Wright moves beyond internalized god-images into psychological mysticism. He invites us into experiencing a felt-sense of divine encounter, offering a unifying framework for envisioning the potential for a shared religious, cultural, and political future.
- Deborah Bryon, Ph.D., Jungian analyst, and author of Time and Trauma in Analytical Psychology and Psychotherapy: The Wisdom of Andean Shamanism.
We live in perilous times. We have never been in greater need of a rigorous and inspiring spiritual wisdom to ground our life together. This book provides guidance for those seeking an authentic spiritual life that integrates all we have learned from the scientific disciplines of depth psychology, biology, and cosmology. Wright accesses the powerful archetypal energies present in every human psyche, while avoiding the limitations of pre-modern world views. Here is a path for those seeking a deepening spiritual encounter with the awe and wonder of the universe but have been stymied by religious doctrine and dogma. Intellectually satisfying and spiritually inspiring, this book provides guidance for the modern mystic.
- Allen Proctor, M. Div., Director Emeritus, The Haden Institute.
In a world disconnected from the transformative power of wisdom traditions reduced to mere systems of belief and belonging, Dr. Wright once again speaks new life over dry bones. Welcoming Our Gods Back Home welcomes us back to the numinosity of direct experience, to relating to the unspeakable within us and between us. With his usual candor and deep insight, Dr. Wright has written a true cri du Coeur, calling each reader to the sacred tasks of reclamation and re-ensoulment in a world desacralized by mere religion.
- Tony Caldwell, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., Jungian analyst, faculty member of The Haden Institute.
Grounded in psychological integrity, scientific honesty, and a deeply religious attitude, Welcoming Our Gods Back Home is a valuable read for those who long to read through the current chaos with hope, who long for ways of realizing our interconnected relationships to all things, and who desire to deepen relationships with the gods who are truly closer than we dare to imagine. Dr. Jerry Wright invites us to consider that the divisions between us are much smaller than the current chaos would have us feel and believe. Written with the keen insight of one who has consciously faced the difficult questions of life and religion, the book is a celebration of the human spirit and left me with a renewed trust in our shared future.
- Cari Keith, BSN, M.Div., Pilgrimage Leader, Former Director of The Guild for Spiritual Guidance.
Table of Contents
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
I. Speaking to the Political Elephant in the Room
II. The Gods We Birth
III. Psychological Mysticism
IV. Autopsy of God the Father
V. Welcoming Our Gods Back Home
AFTERWORD
Psychological Mysticism in Verse
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
SOURCES CITED
